0:25

Welcome

0:25

to Waypoint After Dark, Stranger Things

0:27

Season 4 edition, or I guess Stranger Things

0:30

4, however they do this. Volumes 1

0:32

and 2. God.

0:35

Usually

0:35

we record these late at night,

0:37

but I'll be honest with you here, I am trying to keep

0:39

on a regular sleep schedule, and Patrick's

0:42

unleashed hours, they're just, Patrick,

0:44

they're just too late for me these days.

0:48

Your unleashed dad time, you

0:50

know, all that drinking after 10, going to bed after 11,

0:56

that's just not me these days. I

0:58

have a dog to walk, it's 630.

1:02

No children in this house, I'm just up till

1:05

3am just grinding. Yeah,

1:09

look, my poodle melts when

1:12

the temperature is above 85, so at

1:14

this point now, I'm just like, the sun is barely

1:16

breaking the horizon, I'm like, alright, let's go for your

1:18

big walk so you'll be fucking bearable

1:21

the rest of this day. Oh,

1:23

because you can otherwise only get away with like the

1:26

bathroom stuff, but not any of the energy depletion

1:29

of the dog. Right, she'll go outside and like,

1:31

you know, she doesn't understand like if it was hot earlier,

1:34

it's still gonna be hot, you know, like,

1:37

like we just went outside and you were

1:40

you were miserable, you're like, I want to go back inside, like,

1:43

and now you're back at the door being like, maybe it's good

1:45

now. It's not. I

1:47

promise. I promise. We

1:53

didn't we didn't fix the climate in

1:55

between us going outside. Well, we're

1:57

not going to. So you're talking about.

1:59

I'm trying to get used to it.

2:04

So yeah, so we're actually

2:06

recording. It's still kind of waypoint after dark because I

2:09

have the shades pulled down tight

2:10

to sort of retain

2:13

some cool air here. How warm is it? It's

2:16

warm here, but not, it's like a normal

2:18

July warm as opposed to, okay.

2:21

Yeah, I think it's 90 outside.

2:25

The humidity's not too bad. Where I was

2:27

over my vacation down

2:30

in South Carolina. Now that was, I've

2:33

experienced humidity, Rob. I've not

2:35

experienced capital H humidity

2:38

where just the moment you wake up at

2:41

six in the morning, all day,

2:43

all night is just, you're

2:47

just buckets of sweat. There was a period

2:49

where I was going down to North Carolina a fair

2:52

bit. And I

2:53

had some friends who like, you know, I mean, it

2:56

feels like it's all exurban sprawl out

2:58

there. They're in like the triangle area and different

3:00

parts of it. But like a

3:02

friend of sort of lived in some woods

3:05

they kind of developed.

3:06

And it was like, I

3:08

don't know why you, like what's good about

3:11

this? Like the woods were

3:13

alive with mosquitoes. Oh

3:16

my, the humidity was just unbearable,

3:19

like dawn to dusk. So it was like, you

3:21

go, you open your door and you get like a face

3:24

full of mosquitoes. And

3:27

like

3:27

a hot dog's breath of

3:30

like fresh air.

3:31

And that's like, it's just like that for like

3:34

six months of the year.

3:36

And then you get hurricanes. Yeah. We

3:40

were in a spot called Hilton

3:42

Head, which is like Northeast of

3:45

Savannah, Georgia. Part

3:48

of my family has some spots

3:50

out over there. And the mesquite,

3:53

I mean, apparently according to folks

3:55

who are there more often, the mosquitoes are particularly

3:57

bad, although they are bad in general.

3:59

I feel like the place we were renting had

4:02

a, part of the reason we got it was because there was

4:04

a pool connected to it. It was where you could see it from

4:06

the window, so like, as

4:09

soon as you wake up and the kids say, it's seven

4:11

in the morning, I wanna go swimming. It's like, you can, you

4:14

can do that here. Well, like,

4:16

the first day we were there, I go to like, walk

4:19

the little path, you know, like of 50 feet

4:21

to get to that pool, and it's

4:23

in like a

4:24

little bit of brush, and I didn't realize

4:26

how bad the mosquitoes were, I didn't quite know how to open

4:29

the gate to get there, and in like the 30

4:31

seconds, my two children were

4:33

waiting. Like, I watched,

4:36

like the bats or whatever they're,

4:38

I don't know what the bat, whatever they are in Stranger Things, like

4:40

those kind of like bat equivalents, like the swerve

4:42

that you start seeing towards the end of this season, like,

4:44

descended upon my child's legs,

4:47

and I just saw like five or six

4:49

of them feasting upon

4:51

her, and I'm like just like slapping them, she's crying,

4:54

I'm trying to get this gate open, I eventually just

4:56

pick them up and put them over the gate and

4:58

tell them to walk near the pool and

5:01

get away from them, it was, I

5:03

was with you, I was like,

5:04

this is an interesting, different way to

5:06

do a vacation, we ended up having a great time, but also,

5:09

who does this every day,

5:11

all day? Couldn't be me. No,

5:14

no, and the people who chose, they were like, you

5:16

know, I love this climate, and-

5:19

I guess you just get used to anything, but

5:21

especially if you are prone to mosquitoes, which my kids

5:23

are, I am not, but my wife is

5:26

though she is made of

5:27

candy, like her blood is just

5:30

incredible, she will, in

5:32

the spring or fall, you will know when,

5:35

like, you'll look around and be like, summer's

5:37

not anywhere close, spring is not anywhere

5:40

close,

5:40

but then the first mosquito will

5:43

arrive, and like, my wife will get bitten

5:46

by it, it'll be December, and like the last

5:48

mosquito that hasn't been taken by the bitter cold

5:50

will find her.

5:53

Yeah, no, this is- I think I'm a bit

5:55

the same way, where like, a couple years

5:57

ago I was with family, and every-

5:59

Everyone's having a wonderful time out in

6:02

the yard in the evening, hanging

6:05

out by the campfire. And I'm

6:07

just like, get it off me. Can

6:10

we please move this inside? It's like, no,

6:12

it's such a beautiful night. And it's like, I'm

6:15

basically the bug zapper, except being

6:17

the bug zapper in this case means the bugs

6:19

flock to me and like

6:23

use me to fuel up the reproductive capacity.

6:27

Yeah, I've plenty of times

6:29

in our

6:29

house, like a sliding glass or

6:32

a screen door gets left open, some mosquitoes get in

6:34

and you track them down, like especially at night,

6:36

like when they buzz near, like a lit near

6:38

TV or something like that. So I've smashed my share

6:41

of mosquitoes in my day. But

6:43

at this place we were staying, you had to be religious

6:45

about shutting everything because I swear

6:48

to God, I probably smashed

6:51

10 mosquitoes in my hand and every time

6:53

I did it, like squishing a pocket

6:55

full of blood. I was like fuck, that

6:57

means somebody was feasted on. We

7:01

would have to inspect the rooms before

7:04

we went in to sleep because otherwise everyone

7:06

would wake up with like three bites or like this little

7:08

mosquito is like,

7:10

buffet in front of me for the next six

7:12

to seven hours. Yeah,

7:16

no, that's not for me.

7:19

But I suppose going to the topic at hand

7:21

is Stranger Things season four for

7:24

me, for us. And

7:26

I'm supposed to start this off. What's

7:31

your arc been with Stranger Things?

7:35

I adored the first

7:37

season. Loved

7:39

it from top to bottom, tonally

7:45

the characters, Spielberg's

7:48

one of my favorite directors, like that era of Spielberg

7:51

is like one of my favorite eras, it's what I grew up

7:53

on. And so they like ticked

7:56

every box of nostalgia, but

7:58

I thought even more so.

8:00

And this is like the eternal question over

8:03

Stranger Things, which I don't agree with the

8:05

premise that it is just

8:07

a nostalgia wheelhouse and it succeeds

8:09

only on those merits. I think

8:11

it uses that as like a

8:13

conversational piece and a tone piece,

8:16

but I think the strength of the show is its

8:19

characters and the dynamics between them. And that

8:21

ends up carrying different

8:23

bouts of good and bad storytelling, but at

8:25

its core, I think it has like

8:28

a really incredible group of characters

8:30

that I'm essentially willing to

8:32

watch them do whatever, even

8:34

if I'm not necessarily interested in the stakes around

8:36

them at all times. But I

8:38

love season one, I think it's genuinely

8:41

one of the better things I've seen like in the last decade.

8:45

Season two, I just don't remember

8:48

very much

8:49

about, I like the introduction of characters,

8:51

right? Like season four isn't

8:54

nearly as good unless Max is introduced

8:56

in season two, right? I think a really

8:58

strength of the series is introducing new characters

9:01

and that,

9:03

you know, we can talk about how

9:05

that works to its detriment when the cast gets extremely sprawling

9:08

by season four, but I do think it's a testament

9:10

to the series that as it goes on, it always seems

9:12

to introduce like really interesting dynamic characters.

9:16

Season three, I thought was not like a 10 out

9:18

of 10, but like a strong return to form,

9:21

especially with the introduction of,

9:23

oh was it Maya Hawk? Like she was just

9:26

like a tremendous force in

9:28

season three and I liked the character arcs in season

9:30

three. In season four, I think the way I landed

9:33

on it, I don't, let me see if I can find

9:35

what I wrote,

9:36

semi-drunk

9:39

after I'd finished volume two,

9:43

here we, oh, here's more of my profile.

9:46

Yeah, the latest season of Stranger Things was too long,

9:48

poorly paced and utterly transparent and it's plot twist.

9:51

I gave no shifts, wished it was longer, cried

9:53

frequently and cannot wait for the final season.

9:55

I loved every minute, which is like, do

9:58

I agree with the criticism that it is over?

9:59

I'm overly indulgent, like wildly

10:02

miss-paced, and like

10:04

overly, all the criticisms. I'm

10:06

with you, I think you're right.

10:09

Did I care all that much when I

10:12

watched it? Not really.

10:14

And like that's kind of where I ended up with the series

10:16

as a whole, is like, I do think it is like

10:19

wildly overindulgent

10:20

and poorly paced and like

10:23

the stakes aren't always clear, but the characters

10:25

work so well for me that in

10:28

the mythology is sort of, you know, it doesn't

10:30

matter. Like I'll just watch these characters for seasons on

10:32

end and they find enough interesting parts

10:34

to their arcs that

10:36

like I'll be back.

10:40

Yeah, I,

10:43

so oddly enough, I actually liked

10:45

season two more than three was where

10:47

I was at. And I think part of it was, I mean, one,

10:50

I'm just an autumn guy, you know? So I liked

10:52

like the whole vibe, like that one is against

10:54

the backdrop of Halloween again. That's

10:58

where we're in the Ghostbusters outfit. So I don't think I

11:00

dislike season two as much as, part of the thing

11:02

with Stranger Things is that

11:03

it's taken so long for the seasons

11:06

to come out that in some ways I've just forgotten

11:08

some of the beats of two. Cause two is like

11:10

a lot of Hopper and Eleven's relationship

11:13

getting established, like, which is really good.

11:16

Right, this guy's Sean Astin. And

11:18

it's like, it does have Sean Astin.

11:21

A pretty good like action set piece as

11:23

they like raid the lab

11:25

at the center of town and like have

11:28

to fight their way out of there with the

11:31

monsters like pouring out and they eat. He gets

11:33

got one of the dogs, right? Yeah,

11:36

it's nasty.

11:39

Season three was the, for me,

11:41

that was the season where I was like, I'm

11:43

not sure the resources they are getting access

11:46

to are making them better as creators. Like

11:48

that entire season, I look at this fucking

11:51

mall we built. And

11:55

I guess because I grew up in a mall, I looked

11:57

at that and went, look at this fucking mall

11:59

they built.

11:59

Oh, I mean, look, it totally worked on me. Where

12:02

like, okay, back

12:05

up real quick. I think we can all recognize

12:07

now. Mall's were great. They

12:10

were great. Like the strip mall?

12:12

Outdoor mall's not the same. Outdoor mall's are just

12:14

stores next to each other that

12:16

you've chosen to call a mall because

12:19

a

12:20

mall like culturally signifies

12:22

something to a certain set of people of a certain

12:24

age and demographic. But that's not a mall.

12:26

A mall is a metropolis.

12:29

A mall is a place that I

12:31

as a teenager

12:32

can get into some shenanigans by hanging out

12:35

in a store for too long and then I go to the next

12:37

one. Yeah, and like tons

12:40

of- A mall is a Sabarro. Yeah, tons

12:42

of stores, places to hang, like lots

12:44

of like places to peer in at. Like basically,

12:48

like you can, it's frustrating

12:51

that like downtowns across the country were killed.

12:53

But the mall like did a decent job of like being

12:55

a facsimile of, hey, like, you

12:58

know, there used to be all these small shops like, you

13:00

know, in the place where you live, now you can go

13:02

to a place and recreate the experience

13:05

of wandering downtown, like

13:07

going from shop to shop. It felt, it felt,

13:09

if you lived in, if you grew up in suburbia, like

13:12

when you, and you were too, you know, and you

13:14

weren't going to the city all that often, which is,

13:17

you know, most kids growing up in suburbia, like that

13:19

was your city. Like that was your metropolis,

13:21

like was the mall.

13:23

Yeah, and so

13:26

like I have tons of nostalgia for it and

13:29

like that part of it did work, like

13:31

the completely indulgent max and 11 shopping

13:33

spree bit. I was like, yeah, those

13:35

are the days, right?

13:38

But at

13:40

the same time, the entire aspect

13:42

of like the mall has been occupied

13:45

by the Russians. It's all a front. The

13:48

entire introduction of the whole like

13:51

comical, Ruskies angle

13:53

of it didn't really work, but also

13:55

just the whole season just felt like,

13:58

there was, a lot

14:00

of resources being thrown at something that never

14:03

felt like it was very convincing

14:05

or menacing. It was a very cutesy

14:09

look at me season is kind of how it

14:11

felt. Well,

14:14

and I think more generally, as the

14:16

series goes on, I

14:18

am sure that I don't think the Duffer

14:21

brothers or the two brothers that

14:23

created the series and write, I

14:25

think most, if not all, the scripts, I

14:28

believe them when they say they have broad strokes

14:30

of where they wanted things to go. But the explosion

14:33

of this series meant that

14:35

there's a certain wheel spinning that happens.

14:37

And it's

14:38

a bit of like, well,

14:41

gotta be in Hawkins again. And how

14:44

can we create another dilemma for these same

14:46

characters to deal with mostly on their

14:48

own? And I think they tried to get more miles

14:51

out of that by introducing new characters that

14:53

they go along. And they can extract quite a bit

14:55

out of that. But ultimately, without

14:57

some sort of stakes of an end game,

14:59

which season four gets a little bit into, it does

15:03

rise and fall on some

15:06

of the aesthetic trappings and how much that

15:08

does for you season

15:10

to season, which I think explains maybe a little bit of what you're talking

15:13

about in seasons two and three. And

15:15

I'll just say this, I think season three people have a very different

15:17

reaction to if Joe

15:20

Kerry and Maya Hawk don't

15:22

basically put that

15:23

piece of shit on their backs.

15:27

Yes. Do you want to see some awesome

15:31

buddy comedy energy to

15:34

carry this through? We got you. But

15:37

I think that is a nice

15:40

summation of what makes Stranger

15:42

Things tick as an entire

15:45

story, like

15:46

as a thing, right? Like everything

15:48

about Stranger Things popularity

15:50

is it cannot be distilled down to just

15:53

nostalgia because like the tiktok

15:55

generation that is obsessed with it does not give a

15:57

shit about these kids riding bicycles because

15:59

because it was in E.T. right? Like

16:02

that means nothing to them. And so, but

16:05

the, like season three hinging

16:07

on those two characters having just an unbelievable

16:11

charisma with one another, the one that they established

16:13

in, and each season they're like, they sort

16:15

of

16:16

find those little duos or trios

16:19

that a lot of like, well, you

16:21

may not be interested in the beats that were going on, but

16:23

like, aren't these characters really like fun

16:25

to hang out with as they go along with the beast? And that is

16:27

the show. And the show is just like, do you want to hang out

16:30

with these people? Like be funny and witty

16:32

and then

16:33

feel sad when they go in danger, but

16:35

know that like they're probably not going to die. Like it's

16:37

just a hangout show in a lot

16:39

of ways. And if you don't,

16:41

if you can't vibe on that,

16:43

then you're going to start falling back to traditional

16:46

critiques, which I'm not even disagreeing

16:48

with, but like, if you're looking at stranger things like,

16:51

geez, I don't know about the plotting. And it's like, buddy,

16:54

they were structural false in season one and they

16:56

just got worse as they got more overindulgent. And

16:58

at that point, it's just the fact that

17:00

the characters have hung on and

17:03

worked long enough is

17:05

basically why it's continued to like work

17:07

for me, even as like the plotting

17:10

stuff. No, I think

17:12

they find better footing with the Russian stuff in

17:14

like this season than

17:17

it was in season three. But

17:19

I broadly agree with you of

17:22

how they were.

17:23

I know the commies and they got guns a

17:26

bit in season three was a little. Yeah,

17:28

yeah.

17:30

And I think like what you mentioned there about,

17:33

this is a show that kind of runs on chemistry and who has

17:35

it with each other, kind of like the show has evolved to

17:37

sort of play up

17:39

good combos of characters, people who are fun

17:41

and engaging to watch, but the problem is that

17:43

as it's gone along, I think season four,

17:46

now we're really seeing the fruits of that where there's

17:48

some like

17:49

rosters that they love. Like

17:51

this is a great lineup. These people rule.

17:55

And then there's characters who just, you

17:57

know, as you've gotten so many good new actors

17:59

and characters.

17:59

characters in the story. Some

18:02

of the original cast, I just don't, where do

18:04

we put them? What do we do with these

18:06

people? And Stranger Things

18:08

season four's answer is like, we're

18:11

going to maroon some of them on like,

18:14

C plot Island.

18:16

Like we, like there

18:18

are some characters that we're just like, put

18:20

them on the dumpster. We'll

18:22

get to them like, Hey, you're still part

18:24

of it. You're super important somehow, Finn.

18:28

You know, Will,

18:30

you guys are... Yeah, both Mike and Mike and

18:32

Will are basically given like,

18:35

nothing to do. Like Will is given, especially

18:38

short shrift, you know, and like, I don't... Well,

18:40

and their, their Mina. I didn't feel great

18:42

about, about like the Isier, you know, the, how

18:45

they handled like,

18:46

his sexual identity, like throughout like

18:49

the, like the show. I mean,

18:51

they just don't know what to do with those characters because

18:53

they, they're not funny, right? Like, and

18:55

I think like so much, if you look

18:57

at what works in season four and as the show goes

19:00

along, like

19:01

it's so reliant on comedic dynamics

19:04

between the characters to carry them to the dramatic

19:06

moments. Because the dramatic moments can't

19:08

exist.

19:09

There's not enough there on their own, which is

19:11

why things like,

19:13

you know, Eleven and Brenner,

19:16

like that's one of the, that is one

19:18

of the things where I do agree as like, just fucking

19:21

kill him. Like this arc was over

19:24

seasons ago, but they haven't given

19:26

Eleven enough of another. Well, because

19:28

they marooned Hopper to a different

19:30

part of the planet. So it's like they gave Eleven

19:33

a replacement

19:34

for Papa, you know, if

19:36

I have to hear Papa again, I fucking

19:39

take me out. But

19:41

like, like Eleven's

19:43

not very funny, right? And so like, she has to

19:45

be, you know, like in so much of the show relies

19:48

on like them discovering that, you know, like

19:51

Dustin and Steve, like are

19:54

extreme, like extremely good together

19:57

and like, seem like the type that when you're

19:59

watching their

19:59

sequences, you kind of want

20:02

to just hang out on set with them. Like you're watching one

20:04

exchange, but like, man, they must have just done this for

20:06

hours and had a great time with one another,

20:09

which is like a lot of the vibe of the show.

20:11

Yeah. And I think that is.

20:14

Where where the show has struggled

20:17

is when you like, when

20:19

it is trying to play to some new strengths

20:21

it's got or integrate some new characters and

20:24

then also is dealing with the fact

20:26

that like. Fundamentally,

20:28

first season.

20:30

It's about a group of friends searching for their lost

20:32

friends and a small

20:34

group of like teenagers and adults around

20:37

them.

20:38

And now we're many years later and like the thing about

20:40

child actors is some of them actually

20:42

do turn out to be great actors. Most

20:44

of them don't by and large,

20:47

most of them will end up being like good

20:49

at doing some things, but not everything

20:51

you want an actor to do. So you got like limitations of range.

20:54

You

20:55

know, the Harry Potter movies struggled famously with this.

20:57

Like there was just some there were some parts of that cast

20:59

that were really able

21:01

to grow up and into the roles and

21:03

some people that.

21:05

Weren't as helpful as

21:07

they've done in the earlier films. I

21:09

think this is dealing with a bit of that,

21:12

but the solution they

21:15

they arrive at is to

21:17

just bury some stories. And

21:19

so I think for me, like the big issue with the season

21:22

is there is such a clear. I almost

21:25

feels like. There

21:28

were so many points where I was like, oh, man, do

21:30

we have to go after this fucking plot? I don't know.

21:32

Can we just can we stick with this this group

21:34

of people? And for me, the big one, you've already

21:36

alluded to it. But,

21:38

you know, in the setup for the season, because they they

21:41

fractured the the

21:43

community at the end of season three.

21:45

Hoppins, three, three, three plots.

21:48

Yeah. Hoppins teleported to a

21:51

gulag, which,

21:53

by the way, like, I guess

21:55

that's their get out of get

21:57

out of jail free is ironic here. But.

22:00

it did seem to solve all the problems

22:02

they created with him just being an abusive

22:05

alcoholic for an entire season, just out

22:07

of the fucking blue. Which

22:10

is not to say like, yeah, sometimes alcoholism just

22:12

fucking gets you like that. Yeah, I get it, believe

22:14

me. But- But it was a

22:16

bit one note for the character. Yeah, and then

22:18

nobody seemed to know how fucked up it was. Season

22:20

three is also like, man, Hopps just so

22:22

funny and angry and grumpy. And

22:25

I'm like,

22:27

no, he is, an

22:30

abusive and unreliable parent who

22:32

is scary to be around. And

22:34

they sort of solved that by like, well, now

22:37

he is in Russia. Yeah.

22:43

So he ends

22:47

up there. And so like

22:50

the Byers family heads out to California,

22:53

takes 11 with them since Hopps

22:55

is gone. And so when we start the season,

22:59

you've got half the cast is

23:01

now either in Russia or in California,

23:04

and they never figure

23:06

out, like what they end up having happen,

23:08

is that the first episode Mike goes out to

23:11

California and ends

23:13

up in this plot,

23:16

isolated, first with 11,

23:18

but mostly with Jonathan

23:21

Byers, Will and

23:23

their new stoner friend,

23:25

the Poonchie of season four.

23:28

He has one

23:30

good moment. I will get like, in volume

23:32

two, I forget which episode it was, but

23:35

when they go to visit the other pizza place to put 11

23:37

in to like

23:40

their makeshift cooler, and

23:42

he has the conversation with the other pizza guy,

23:44

like it's the one time, that character was funny when he

23:46

was introduced, and then it became clear,

23:49

oh, they don't,

23:50

like there's nothing else. Like they're just gonna play this one

23:53

song again, because they thought it was

23:55

really funny in the editing room, and

23:57

then this guy's just gonna talk the exact.

24:00

same way and it's like, oh. Yeah,

24:02

it's like, do you like

24:05

the stoner comedies? Great.

24:08

But that's basically all they have

24:11

to do with that character.

24:14

It's frustrating. But I think it's because they

24:16

can't actually, the

24:18

appeal of the show is being

24:21

around these characters. And so they kind

24:23

of push themselves into a corner in

24:27

which what people want is to see other

24:29

characters bouncing off one another. And

24:31

then that means you can't really side-light them

24:34

for very long. And I think that

24:36

also is then the result of the pacing

24:38

and editing issues. Like the Russia

24:40

arc is like an episode,

24:43

right? Like maybe like an extended

24:46

one episode, but they don't want

24:48

to know a writer. Like Joyce Briar

24:50

to solve this puzzle

24:53

with Hopper in an episode.

24:55

We want to be coming back

24:57

to her. So we got to really dole out

24:59

like, how are they getting here? What's a setback before?

25:02

They have to make it a season long arc, even though

25:05

Joyce doesn't have an arc. She

25:07

wanted to fuck Hopper at the end of season three and then

25:09

at the end of season four. When are you at least fuckable? Thinking

25:11

about fucking. And those

25:15

characters make no,

25:17

they make physical movement, but no emotional

25:20

movement because they just need them to exist in

25:22

stasis for the rest of the

25:24

story to, for the season to end,

25:26

where they can just end where they began back

25:28

in Hawkins and

25:31

like a slightly expanded season one dynamic. But

25:33

I think that's the show really runs into,

25:35

like I can, you can almost see like a fan

25:38

edit of the season that

25:40

just like, look, what if we just turn

25:42

the prison thing into like, you would

25:44

put it towards the end, right? And just make it

25:46

one season and you could tease it a little bit all along

25:48

the way, but it's like

25:49

these episodes became so bloated because

25:52

well, here's another 20 minutes

25:54

in Russia with this one unreliable

25:57

airplane guy that we gotta go back to over and

25:59

over again. again. Yup. Yup.

26:02

It got that shit

26:04

like got old as hell to where

26:07

it's like, oh, you're

26:09

a Soviet

26:10

Russia smuggler traps

26:12

you like it. It

26:16

absolutely like it's not that

26:18

funny to begin with is a

26:20

stock character. And then it's like the same

26:22

like cycle of like, man, we can't address this guy. He's

26:25

a treacherous little fuck. We're

26:27

just going to loop that again and again. Make

26:29

him a redemption arc at the end. Fuck him. I

26:32

did not. That was completely unnecessary.

26:35

No, dude, like, yeah, like you're

26:37

there. You're there in a Soviet prison. There's

26:41

there's smackaraw pistols everywhere

26:43

and like tiled

26:45

basements. You know what to do. That's what that's what

26:47

you didn't really

26:49

need. The helicopter at the end. I mean, you know, you

26:52

got Hopper with the seemingly

26:54

holy, unnecessary sword sword

26:56

fight that looked admittedly cool

27:00

as shit. But like, if you spent

27:02

any time thinking about it, it was like, has he

27:04

held a sword before? Like, dude,

27:06

I was like, what are you doing? Bring

27:09

the Witcher staff

27:12

over for this? Like, it just like

27:14

I feel like even like the whole

27:17

thing felt like you put oil on it or

27:19

something to prepare. It was a ridiculous

27:21

fight.

27:23

But it felt

27:25

you know, when people say it again,

27:28

it is overindulgent. It

27:30

feels like

27:32

the Duffer brothers were like, hey, no, be cool.

27:35

If you picked up a sword, but a demogorgon and

27:37

they're like, put it put it in. No,

27:39

no, it's no, no, it's needed.

27:42

Yeah,

27:43

that was it was it's

27:47

it was such a slow developing plot. And it's also

27:50

one that was so clearly expensive as hell. Right.

27:53

They built their all prison. Like you see

27:55

these locations again and again. Well, I bet the

27:57

sets would be cool as hell to walk around. Yeah,

27:59

it's.

27:59

But it is just like he

28:02

there's an entire like they do a really

28:04

involved multiple multi-episode arc

28:07

to set up the first escape attempt and

28:09

then Another escape attempt and

28:11

then oh no, we got to go back to the prison

28:13

to help the kids I know well

28:16

because they need to set up the You

28:18

know pretty bog-standard like storytelling of like

28:20

we want to do the cross cutting

28:22

editing Like towards the climax

28:25

where we can have everyone going towards a similar

28:27

goal And if they're not aware that their goals are aligning

28:30

creating additional tension but

28:32

Because those plots are like happening at

28:34

different speeds like you know like like most pointy

28:37

when you

28:38

know Nancy and and

28:40

drew them like get like sort of like

28:42

Hung up by Vecna and then the then

28:44

the show cuts away for like 30 minutes we're

28:47

like it feels like it's in real time

28:49

and that is a consequence of

28:51

like The because they can't

28:54

actually properly line things up, but

28:56

the way they've paced everything before it it

28:58

ends up robbing I

29:00

think you know the show manages to generate enough

29:02

dramatic tension on its own to be effective But

29:04

I think it undercuts its ability

29:06

to be even more effective because you're just like robbing

29:10

literal tension from a scene where

29:12

we're supposed to be

29:13

Yes, I know these characters probably aren't going to die

29:15

But like in the moment you can feel anxiety

29:18

over it And you just can't when you

29:20

suddenly realize in the back of your head When

29:23

you go to the bathroom as you're pausing the episode for the

29:25

third time like hey It's been a long

29:27

time since he's seen Nancy like Yeah

29:35

But

29:36

this is I just want to point out this interview I just when

29:38

I was googling the sword it's the same sword

29:40

used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan

29:43

the Barbarian

29:45

See now that doesn't that feel like the

29:47

duffer brothers got high and we're like,

29:49

you know be cool Oh, I think I think we

29:52

can get that They're

29:54

like who's gonna tell us no like put

29:56

it in the Netflix budget their subs haven't

29:58

dropped yet

29:59

We conned people on

30:02

subscribing for two months for this thing

30:04

because of our little one month gap between...

30:08

They claimed it was the VFX stuff, which could

30:11

actually be true, but it... Because

30:13

I feel like if you were actually going to split it up, it was

30:15

such an awkward way to split the seasons. Like

30:18

it wasn't particularly clean. Like

30:20

I almost buy the story that

30:23

literally the episodes weren't

30:25

finished and Netflix said, fuck it, like we have a

30:27

quarterlies coming up, we need to drive subs, put

30:30

out the episodes

30:31

that you have. Well, I

30:33

mean, it's hard not to look at that structure in

30:35

the context of like Netflix having

30:37

just one dire earnings

30:39

call after another where it's like, turns

30:41

out growth is not infinite. And our

30:43

strategy of raising prices

30:46

on people and pistol whipping them until

30:48

they stop sharing logins with

30:50

family. Weirdly enough,

30:53

it's depressing interest in the service.

30:57

But

30:58

like, you sort of put

31:00

your finger on something else there, which is that

31:04

structurally, this season's

31:06

just kind of... I

31:08

don't mean in terms of just the overall plot art, but I mean like the

31:11

episode runtimes are long. And

31:13

sometimes it's just that, okay,

31:15

they are clearly... They're

31:18

not getting edited very much. If they want an

31:20

episode to be like, you know, our 20 minutes,

31:23

they can just do that. But there were... Which is

31:25

Netflix. Netflix, it's one of the worst

31:27

impulses Netflix has allowed

31:29

creatives was like... I

31:33

understood the appeal of streaming being like, hey, you don't

31:35

have to do the 42 minute format anymore. Like you have

31:37

some leeway to do an actual hour, but

31:39

like

31:40

one of the consequences of that has just been... And Stranger

31:42

Things is a really good example of how

31:45

that gets out of control is just,

31:46

you know, the editing

31:49

exists for... It's an art form. It

31:52

is not there just to hit, you

31:54

know, 42 minutes. Like less is more

31:57

is frequently a superior problem.

32:00

Well, and then but then there were also places

32:02

where it was like

32:04

This episode is two hours

32:06

long

32:08

And I just look at it's like No,

32:10

that's just three episodes stapled together. Why did you

32:13

do this? Like so well, that's what that's

32:15

what that's what the finale is Like I was talking to

32:17

cotto

32:18

Earlier when we were in

32:20

a meeting and he had mentioned he was they were they'd

32:22

almost finished the new season and

32:24

he didn't realize That the last one was two hours and 30 minutes

32:27

and I said well I

32:28

mean it is and it isn't it's

32:30

actually 90 minutes and then there's

32:32

an hour epilogue and they just

32:35

Copied and pasted them because making

32:37

a third episode Like the

32:39

epilogue like it's like a less exciting

32:41

thing for people to click on also really would

32:43

have highlighted how little happens in That hour long

32:46

like round up

32:48

Right. It was a very it's very return

32:50

of the king ish is like what we got another like

32:52

another slow-mo reunion which

32:55

You know admittedly even as I critique

32:57

it I'm like, you know, I'm you know for

33:00

drinks in and I'm Crying

33:02

this hopper comes out like that's the thing was straight

33:05

That is the thing this show works for me

33:07

on

33:08

such a like primal emotional level

33:10

and I've so bought into the characters that

33:13

there are

33:15

Sometimes there are series or just media or stories

33:18

like

33:19

You just can't rationally think about like

33:21

stranger things like I can sit here and have the intellectual

33:23

academic Conversation about its editing

33:26

and I'm just like

33:27

you told me that episode was three hours and 30 minutes

33:30

like That's you know what?

33:32

I guess it had to be I guess it had to be and like

33:34

let's just watch some more 11 ripped

33:36

down another helicopter in slow motion.

33:40

I guess she needs to talk to Papa for another 40

33:42

minutes about Was

33:47

like wasn't there that whole like soft pilot

33:50

from 11 series where she was off in Chicago

33:52

fucking shit up like Didn't Papa just

33:54

get straight up killed at some point and

33:56

here he was and I was like

33:59

Why are you here? Why

34:01

are you still Papa?

34:04

Just give it to Paul Reiser, man. He's good at the show. He,

34:07

I just like Paul Reiser in general

34:09

and his character is really fun

34:12

and he's just an actor you just don't see

34:15

in many things these days. And so it's kind of delightful

34:17

to see him in a show like this.

34:19

Like every time he was in a scene, he's not like a scene

34:21

stealing character, but he's just, he's

34:24

an actor that I just enjoyed every time

34:26

he was on screen in this. Is

34:29

he still left in that? Like, like last

34:31

time we saw that, like this, this, we

34:33

didn't die. And I guess

34:36

whatever commander, you know, whoever is like

34:38

that part of the government that is

34:40

anti-11, is he, is, but

34:43

he was,

34:45

he was left like tied to like

34:47

the bottom of that one

34:49

of that, that agency or whatever they were in

34:51

towards the. So yeah, I mean, my

34:53

vibe is the shitty

34:56

evil Colonel

34:57

is still uncertain enough that he's on the right

34:59

side of this, that like he's hesitating. And

35:02

given that like five minutes later, you

35:04

could argue that they're all proven

35:06

right, like pretty thoroughly. Like,

35:10

Hey, that disaster that was happening Hawkins, it happened.

35:12

Now you'd say, well, you know, it's because London got

35:15

loose, but yeah, I don't

35:17

know. Oops, oops, oops, the

35:19

earth has ripped apart and several

35:21

places wonder if things are

35:24

going wrong. It is so funny. Like the,

35:26

they end this, the other weird things

35:28

where the season ends every

35:30

other season, it was a bit like

35:33

the characters have all in their own ways.

35:35

Fallen into

35:38

like, well into the upside down, become aware of it, become

35:41

aware that there's this like other world

35:44

and this like breach into

35:46

like everyday reality with like creatures like magic

35:48

and shit.

35:50

And now

35:53

they fully just like literally

35:55

ripped that open. Like the hell

35:57

mouth is open, like cutting across the.

36:00

Hawkins, Indiana. And

36:02

there's like,

36:04

creepy upside down mold

36:06

blowing through like fucked

36:08

up snowstorm in

36:10

in the town. So like, that whole the

36:13

conceit that sort of held them together for

36:15

multiple seasons here of all

36:18

this wacky shit being kind of invisible to

36:20

the normies in the town. And then they get to they

36:23

get they, you know, essentially try to adopt the structure of like,

36:25

we're gonna go through a year of school. And then

36:28

like, you know, the evolutions that go along with

36:30

that, you know, socially, physically,

36:33

psychologically, and then they also have the up

36:35

down upside down stuff to give it like the

36:37

goofy, you know, the fun sci fi stuff. They

36:40

lose some of that because just the kids age

36:42

so quickly, the seasons took so long. But

36:45

yeah, it does

36:45

leave the final season in a in a weird

36:48

spot in terms of like, I just don't even know what the structure is,

36:50

because there's nothing to

36:53

hide behind anymore. Like,

36:55

the upside down is no longer upside down. Like we've

36:58

mushed the two together. So I want

37:00

to dip into some questions because I think some of these

37:02

questions are just things that set us up

37:04

nicely to talk about different aspects of the show. And

37:06

yeah, this isn't here. But I have a question

37:08

from Patrick, Rob, do you know what Vecna

37:12

see is?

37:14

No, hold on. I'll just read this from pop buzz.com.

37:16

Even anywhere near the internet lately, you'll know that Vecna

37:19

see is a portmanteau for Vecna and

37:21

pussy. Stans have essentially taken the

37:23

phrase, she put her whole pussy into this meaning

37:26

she did something very well and edited to apply

37:28

directly to their faves. In this

37:30

video for Netflix, Jamie, the actor who plays

37:32

Vecna reacts to a viral video of TikTok

37:35

star Jack wright dressing up as Henry Creel

37:37

and booty popping with the caption pops

37:39

Vecna see.

37:43

I didn't know about that.

37:46

That's exciting. That's exciting new information. I

37:51

do recommend you don't strike

37:54

me as as a TikTok

37:56

browser other than like stuff that like comes through Twitter.

38:00

It is worth, like, one

38:02

of the Stranger Things memes

38:06

currently is people just pretending

38:08

to have their bones

38:10

broken and the way that Vecna does

38:12

in increasingly wild

38:16

ways. My TikTok is a combination

38:19

of

38:20

animals and children.

38:23

And then I need to make a separate

38:25

TikTok account so my kid can search

38:27

through it with me and we can laugh at goofy

38:30

animal videos. But then occasionally I'll make

38:32

the mistake of searching a hash. I was like, I'm going to

38:34

search for Stranger Things stuff and see what's on TikTok.

38:36

And then it just comes through. It's like,

38:38

here's a kitten falling

38:40

off of a chair. And then

38:44

here's someone shouting Vecna

38:46

C as we're sitting

38:48

in bed going to sleep.

38:52

Jesus

38:54

Christ. Anyway, what

38:57

do you got? So thanks

38:59

for getting these questions from our listeners.

39:03

One question came in. Thoughts and opinions

39:05

about Eddie or actually why does the character archetype

39:07

of the nerdy alternative kid get killed off

39:09

in media so much? My thought is the inherent queer

39:12

coding of the character and

39:14

in the ever present barrier gaze trope

39:17

that sis has don't let die. So

39:19

let's take two parts of this. I think

39:22

Eddie, how he's introduced,

39:26

he is sort of the king of the

39:28

nerds at

39:30

their high school. And I like the character of Eddie

39:32

a lot in part because Eddie

39:35

is so close

39:38

to a number of my friends in

39:40

high school and in some ways

39:42

very close to me. Like

39:45

the whole thing, he

39:46

is so bad and checked out of

39:49

school that he has failed

39:51

to graduate multiple times. I

39:53

cannot tell you how close I came to not

39:55

graduating high school on time. Really? Dude,

39:58

it came down to me.

40:00

begging a math teacher, I was

40:02

like, dude, I gotta get out of here. And he

40:05

was like, you don't come to class. I haven't seen you in like

40:08

three weeks. You just leave school. And

40:11

me being like, yeah, I know,

40:13

that's my bad, but like I can't,

40:16

I need to get out of here, man. And

40:18

he was like, you do need to get out of here.

40:21

And I gotta get out of here. He quit teaching the next year.

40:25

And so he just gave me the gentleman C.

40:29

And like, I graduated,

40:31

but I think it was like- I wonder maybe, is

40:33

it something that you had the,

40:35

you're honest enough to ask and like

40:37

sort of beg as opposed to, I

40:39

don't know, just letting it go, never showing up and

40:41

him just like failing without

40:43

never having a conversation. It's hard

40:46

to, like, when I think back to that,

40:48

my senior year is one of those things where

40:50

it's like,

40:52

I was so just done with school

40:54

and so pissed off that I was still there, that

40:57

like, I just went to basic, like just open

40:59

mutiny. And it was like one of those- I'm

41:02

just done with this existing structure? Okay,

41:05

I got you. Yeah, I just didn't, I didn't want to be there

41:07

anymore. Didn't want to like, was

41:09

sit, like there were things I liked, there were people I

41:11

liked, but for the most part, I was just,

41:14

I felt like

41:17

it was clocking in for

41:20

like eight hours a day to do shit I just

41:22

absolutely did not care about and wasn't

41:24

felt like. I was like, I know this, I

41:26

know that I'm getting nothing out of this, right? Like,

41:30

I know that there's no value in

41:32

me taking these classes at

41:34

this point. That was college for me because

41:36

I already knew, I was like, I already know when to

41:38

get a job at a place like one up. So it was

41:40

like, at least there I had like friends and like partying

41:43

to counterbalance it, but the classes were just

41:45

none of, like this doesn't mean anything

41:47

to like

41:50

my career prospects. So I'm

41:52

just gonna, you know what? Nobody

41:54

checks your grades in, out

41:57

of college. So I'm just gonna get like a C, C

41:59

plus B minus.

41:59

and just move on with the life. Well, see, that's

42:02

the thing, right? I had done this at a point where I get really

42:04

fucked up my ability to get in colleges. Well, that's the

42:06

thing. High school, you can't do that, or you shouldn't

42:08

do that. College, what you're there, just whatever

42:11

you need to do, just get to the other side. But

42:14

so when I look at Eddie and who

42:16

he represents, a bunch of me and my friends were in

42:18

a really similar boat of just

42:21

being in real danger

42:23

of just having like

42:26

your life put on hold while you

42:29

had to like

42:29

check off these boxes and like show you

42:32

got an education at a place that was like

42:34

not effectively speaking to you

42:36

at all. And

42:38

the fact that within

42:41

that,

42:42

he's sort of seen as like

42:44

a loser weirdo, but he's also completely carved

42:46

out a niche as

42:49

like Lord of the Nerds. And-

42:52

The show treats him with no condescension. The

42:54

show thinks he is cool as hell.

42:57

Even if it presents the elements around

42:59

him of like, what do other people think

43:02

of it? Like there's stories

43:05

that have similar character dynamics,

43:08

but don't necessarily treat

43:11

that group with reverence, even

43:14

if they are central to the story and like everything

43:16

about Stranger Things, like yeah, the rest of the world

43:18

might not get them, but it treats

43:20

them as the hero characters. And like they're cool

43:22

and like that they found each other. That's cool.

43:25

And it celebrates that in a

43:26

lot of different ways and the fact

43:29

that-

43:30

And that he's just not some, I think

43:32

in addition to that, he's not

43:35

some antisocial or

43:37

like a social like embodiment

43:40

of alienation

43:42

and just like fandom, right? He's the object of

43:44

the stoner character, right? Like that guy is not a

43:46

character. He is just, he's

43:49

not even a plot device. He's just like a

43:51

joke from the writer's room that they

43:53

couldn't

43:54

give up for whatever reason, or they liked the actor.

43:56

I have no idea, but like Eddie could have

43:58

been that because he- He is just the sacrificial

44:01

lamb for the season. And I have complicated

44:03

feelings on how he goes

44:06

out. But he is Sean Astin's character. This

44:09

show doesn't, it's funny, because

44:11

I've read interviews where Millie Bobby Brown,

44:13

who plays Eleven, has essentially

44:15

called the Duffer Brothers pussies. They're like,

44:17

they just won't kill anyone. He's like, I

44:19

text them every couple of months, they're like,

44:21

kill me, I dare you. And

44:24

they've responded with like, that's not what this show is.

44:27

They've said like upfront, like

44:30

we're not like a game, we're not like taking our lesson

44:32

of Game of Thrones is not, like

44:35

if you kill the main character, the story is stronger.

44:37

They're like, we think people are watching because they want

44:39

to watch these characters and they're willing to

44:41

sacrifice what you lose

44:43

as a result of not being able to put your characters

44:46

in real danger and then get the benefits,

44:48

at least from their perspective. And I kind of agree with

44:50

them, although maybe not to the degree that

44:52

they've arrived at,

44:54

of allowing all those characteristics to continue to be

44:57

around one another, but then you get

44:59

characters like Eddie, but the difference with Eddie

45:01

is,

45:02

and this is I think a real strength of the show, is like he

45:04

comes in fully formed. Like immediately

45:06

within an episode of like being around him,

45:09

like

45:12

you feel like you know him and he fits

45:14

in and he slots and he doesn't even come across,

45:16

he does strike you even by the end, like

45:19

I think this dude could survive. Maybe he is like

45:22

the new Robin. And that's what I was kind of rooting

45:24

for. I don't

45:26

want to step into any other points, I was

45:28

kind of rooting for Steve to die. I really thought

45:30

they had introduced Eddie

45:32

as a Steve replacement

45:34

so that Dustin had like

45:36

someone to emotionally

45:38

be connected to. And if you remove Steve

45:40

from the Stranger Things pile, like yes,

45:43

he would be missed,

45:44

but I feel like it sets up so many emotional

45:47

dominoes for the characters. I was

45:49

like, that's why Eddie exists. He is going

45:51

to be the new Steve and

45:54

this will devastate the entire

45:56

group. Because even though Steve

45:58

is set up as a douchebag

45:59

when it opens like

46:01

he loves everyone loves Steve by now. Yeah,

46:04

it's no I'm with you. I thought

46:06

like I thought Eddie being there was hanging

46:09

like the shadow of death on Steve. Yes,

46:12

because he becomes kind of extraneous in

46:14

a lot of ways. And then a lot of a season is

46:16

him reexamining old mistakes and

46:18

like seeing like realizing that like,

46:21

oh shit like

46:23

he actually did love Nancy

46:25

and like just kind of blew his shit head when he met

46:27

her. And now like can't undo

46:29

that.

46:30

And yeah, I sort of figured

46:33

that like his

46:36

whole thing has been to like be

46:38

get super stuck in like trying to save the day and be

46:40

the hero. Every year this time he would sort of go down

46:42

doing that and Eddie would be

46:44

there. So the things

46:46

I really dig about Eddie is

46:49

from the first.

46:53

You sort of see what a comforting

46:55

and sweet presence he is when he

46:57

runs into Chrissy in the woods while she's

46:59

like suffering through

47:02

her last day before Vecna gets her. And

47:05

you can sort of see that like Eddie

47:07

is a guy people like that Eddie is like,

47:10

you know, reads the room and is really

47:12

compassionate and like

47:15

sensitive to how people are feeling.

47:18

And God, the scene

47:20

as he's realizing that like

47:22

the odds of him surviving this next the

47:24

night are pretty bad when you sort

47:26

of telling Dustin, you know, never change, never grow

47:29

up like you stay you

47:31

realize when they're on the hill is is so

47:33

good.

47:34

And like

47:36

to me, the way that reason I think it's beautiful

47:38

is that like sort of him

47:40

recognizing that like

47:43

this is what he's going to get

47:45

the passes for fatherhood

47:47

in his life that like

47:49

probably things are not going to go well.

47:52

And he stands a real good chance of getting gotten all

47:54

this and sort of like he

47:56

sort of hit on both sides, right? Even if he

47:59

comes out of the upside down.

47:59

just fine like the

48:02

satanic panic thing they said like he's fucked

48:05

like yeah like they're not gonna prosecute

48:08

Vecna and and like clear

48:11

him of the charges like he's

48:14

sort of screwed on both ends which is

48:16

like the I guess the motivating factor for him to try

48:18

and you know you know make the sacrifice that

48:20

he does but

48:22

I'm with you that like that is that

48:24

this really beautiful arc to the character where

48:26

where he ends up is is

48:29

the yeah feeling like this this parental

48:31

figure that he will probably never actually be yeah

48:36

yeah I think that's that's like

48:39

absolutely terrific stuff and I think he's

48:41

he is chemistry with everybody

48:44

and I think genuinely

48:46

also seems like a really cool DM

48:48

like his Dungeons and Dragons

48:51

group seems fucking awesome in

48:54

in part because like he's operating in a mode

48:56

of D&D where it was more like the the DM

48:59

was there to fuck with you and try to kill you that

49:02

was that era

49:04

of D&D and he

49:06

still makes that fun where he's like kind

49:09

of rooting for the players but also is

49:11

like man like you know I got traps set for

49:13

you he's not he's not some character and

49:15

I was super bummed that he he gets

49:18

killed and often he

49:20

gets killed doing something that uh

49:23

you know to your point about a lot of things being redundant in

49:25

the season

49:28

he's already proven that he's not gonna like cut and

49:30

run on his friends multiple times

49:32

but here yet again he has to do it yet like to

49:35

be like no what I need to do is

49:37

hop on a bike and pedal real fast so the

49:39

bat creatures can kill me all at once yeah

49:41

I don't think that he that was my problem with

49:44

how he was less even though I wanted him to survive

49:46

but I understand that I

49:49

understand where that why they arrive at where

49:51

they arrive at but I just didn't buy

49:54

like the sacrifice was unnecessary I get it

49:56

I don't think he saved anyone or did anything

49:59

and I didn't It necessarily even track

50:01

with the character wanting to do a

50:03

sacrifice in order to prove to himself Like

50:06

that's where they end up with those final lines is like

50:08

I didn't run away this time, right? Like they want

50:11

you know, I see the character arc

50:13

But it was one of those moments where I just don't buy the event

50:15

that led to it. Even if I buy

50:18

Why the character would do something like that.

50:21

I just don't

50:22

it just didn't seem like it fit with like

50:25

the actual stakes of I I

50:28

Don't necessarily see it as like a barrier

50:30

gaze type thing because for me if like the

50:32

gate coating on Eddie seems so

50:34

subtle that like I

50:37

Don't see him as a specially coded I

50:40

like I'm open to being like that. I'm completely

50:42

oblivious to this stuff very likely

50:45

than I am but I

50:47

would say stranger things is not subtle

50:50

about this stuff like

50:53

Will is Well,

50:55

I will say it is beating

50:58

you over the head with Robbins

51:02

like,

51:02

you know like sexual identity but will

51:05

wait this season or third cuz I'm season

51:07

three I actually have some real I think season three

51:09

I don't remember season three the reveal

51:12

that she is gay is one of

51:14

the most bonkers like the way they handle

51:16

that is

51:17

Is like it is Unreal

51:20

so the entire so season three

51:23

she and she and Steven do not tell

51:25

me like that Oh, it's all about like Steve

51:27

has protagonist syndrome

51:29

or thinks he's the main character like the entire

51:32

season They've got this like

51:34

rom-com energy, but also like buddy

51:36

comedy energy whatever, but

51:38

a lot of like a lot of the through-line with her is

51:40

her being like fixated on Steve's love

51:42

life and also

51:45

like referring to all the like all

51:47

The various relationships he's had prior to

51:50

now and he falls for

51:52

her and At the end

51:54

like sure begins to confess his feelings and then her

51:56

the way she reveals. This is no I Wasn't

51:59

the best obsessed with you, I was obsessed

52:02

with the girl you were dating. And

52:06

it's like, and it's like, but

52:08

you, but you centered Steve and every one of these

52:10

stories, like, it's like one of those

52:12

things where it's like, I got you. Cause

52:14

I said, you know, it's your expectations have led you astray,

52:17

but not actually because everything the

52:19

character said like fits into this template.

52:22

And then they're just like, like

52:24

they, they turned her being gay in the scene, like,

52:26

kind of a like plot twist. And

52:29

so like, that's one way they've handled it. And

52:32

then the way they handle it in season four

52:35

is will in every scene is just like hand

52:37

of the note, like look like you're going

52:40

to burst into tears every

52:42

single second that Mike

52:45

is around you and oblivious to your feelings.

52:48

And the scene of the car is like legitimately

52:50

heartbreaking. Like

52:52

it's a, it's a really effective moment, but it just

52:54

feels like, I don't

52:57

know, like they go sort of like to one end with

53:00

Robin's character in season four is where she's like, I'm

53:02

gay, I'm gay, I'm gay. Like I'm talking about

53:04

how I'm gay. And then like, well, we'll just needs

53:06

to be like,

53:08

we can't, we can't just get over the hump with him.

53:10

And I realized the characters are in different places, but I

53:12

think I could see a bit of

53:14

like where this question is coming from, where it's where it's like,

53:16

well, Robin gets to finally get

53:18

over there and it's like, this, the series is constantly

53:21

talking about it. It's integrated into her plot.

53:23

And it's like, well, if you view Eddie as

53:26

queer coded, like it's never explicit.

53:28

And then Will's whole arc is like, well,

53:31

he's never going to get to kiss like the

53:33

friend that he's fallen in love with. Um,

53:35

and I can just see how that could,

53:38

could, could, could add up to people as being like

53:40

pretty annoying. I think, and

53:42

I think

53:43

the thing with it,

53:44

again, speaking of things, they didn't have space to

53:46

develop. I think they

53:48

do this. Okay. And it's, it's

53:51

a really insightful and interesting thing that could do,

53:54

which is

53:55

Robin is a queer woman living in

53:58

Indiana in the 1980s. And

54:01

so the situation she lays

54:03

out to Steve in season four, where it's like, hey, like

54:05

you ask girl out and she's like, not a

54:08

new, it's like no big deal. Like if it goes

54:10

wrong for me,

54:11

it's dangerous and could

54:13

be like life ruining. And so like

54:15

a big thing for her is like,

54:17

she's got this, it's not insecurity

54:20

in her own identity,

54:21

but has to be really like is justifiably

54:24

insecure about how people respond to that identity.

54:27

And so they start

54:29

to get at this thing where like, how does she express interest

54:31

in someone when it'd

54:34

be dangerous for both of them to sort of like,

54:36

you know, put cards on the table,

54:38

but they just don't have space to do that.

54:41

And so it turns into

54:43

a lot of

54:45

Robin alluding to her sexuality

54:47

and being like, I'm really pining after this girl in

54:50

band.

54:51

And then it's just kind of forgotten until the very

54:53

end where it's like, oh

54:55

yeah, that chick's gay. Don't worry about it. For

54:58

sure. And that

55:01

like, I just, so that's

55:03

the one part with like the

55:06

where Eddie sits in the story.

55:09

If he's like clearly queer coded, then

55:11

hats off to them for like getting at least one

55:13

characterization subtle enough

55:16

that it's not the defining trait this season.

55:19

But I like a by and large,

55:22

I loved Eddie as a character,

55:25

the fucking

55:28

concert at the end of the world type thing.

55:30

Oh my God. Like absolutely.

55:32

This is music. Absolutely.

55:36

And again, like as you've alluded to,

55:39

it's all this like

55:40

good with a capital G. I don't

55:42

know. Was it cool?

55:44

Was it fun? Was I like delighted

55:46

and satisfied when they plugged

55:49

in like the guitar into the amp and

55:51

began shredding to lure in the

55:53

bats? Like,

55:55

yes. Like they basically, they got, they

55:58

got Netflix to give them money.

55:59

to produce a live action Meatloaf

56:02

album cover. You're

56:06

not wrong. That's a really good way. It's

56:08

because it's not dark enough to be an actual metal

56:10

album cover. By the way, it is. It

56:12

is too pretty and too

56:15

gaudy like it's. It's

56:17

too operatic. It's basically it's

56:19

basically the bad out of hell cover that

56:22

they're doing there. But yeah,

56:25

like that shit was that shit was a lot of fun. Um,

56:29

there's

56:29

tees up another question though, because

56:31

this was the thing that was looming over Eddie

56:34

the entire time. Someone writes the

56:36

character of Jason as a manic jock

56:38

swept up by the satanic panic is really interesting

56:41

to me because despite all of his many bad actions,

56:43

they're all informed by evidence presented before

56:45

him. He also does not seem to be mean

56:48

or bully any of the unpopular people in the school

56:50

and only becomes a weird Christian crusader

56:53

after Chrissy dies. Is there a

56:55

world where Jason could have been not an antagonist

56:57

or even an ally like Steve in

56:59

season one if he learned the truth about Hawkins

57:01

earlier?

57:03

So satanic panic and the character Jason.

57:06

Yeah, how we feel about how that was handled. I

57:12

don't know how I felt about the arc, but the

57:14

actor played it with such like vigor

57:17

that you couldn't help but be

57:20

compelled by the performance, which

57:22

is kind of mostly how I felt

57:25

about that. Like Jason's

57:28

arc in general was like, well,

57:30

if I sat and thought about this for too long. Yeah,

57:33

I don't know. Because maybe Jason mostly

57:35

exists as to like being an antagonist for

57:38

the other characters to move the chess

57:40

pieces around the board less than I actually

57:42

buy Jason and how he

57:44

arrives at like the place

57:47

that he that he is. I don't think it's like completely

57:49

off base and I sort of see how you

57:52

connect the dots on it, but

57:54

I don't know like.

57:56

I liked watching him. He was very menacing. Like

57:58

he made you feel uncomfortable. uncomfortable the

58:00

moment he stepped into a room, but

58:02

I don't know that I've fully

58:05

bought his radicalization as the

58:07

story. I mean, again, it's sort of

58:09

like a lot of the storytelling in

58:11

Stranger Things is like, I buy it in

58:13

the moment because it's

58:15

like cool and anxious

58:18

and powerful. Like the

58:20

moment I start sitting back and being like, well,

58:23

how'd Jason get here? Like, what do you really, like,

58:25

you know, I don't know, but like the performance was

58:27

so strong that I just sort of like went along

58:30

for the ride, even for where

58:32

it ended up. I buy like the town

58:34

doing this, right? Like the general arc

58:37

of like, these people

58:39

are dying in horrendous ways. We

58:41

don't know why this town seems cursed.

58:44

Someone standing up and like grabbing the pitchforks,

58:47

like that all tracks to me. If anything,

58:49

Hawkins should have been doing it. Like I'm surprised it wasn't

58:51

happening to, you know, when a whole mall was

58:53

destroyed, you know, like there's all

58:55

sorts of, like when a monster was trampiesing through the

58:57

woods, like seems like there's moments where this

58:59

could have happened earlier, but

59:03

they were clearly going for that arc this season. And

59:06

so yeah, I don't know. I don't know that's

59:08

a success or a failure as much as like, it just sort

59:10

of, I don't know. It was just sort of there, which

59:12

is maybe not the strongest answer to the question, but

59:14

it's definitely how I reacted to the character. Yeah,

59:17

I think,

59:20

I think Jason

59:22

is smarmy from the start. He gives that atrocious

59:25

speech at the pep rally where it's like all these people

59:27

died so that we could win the championship.

59:31

And he's kind of oblivious to what

59:33

people around him are thinking or going

59:36

through. Like we talked about like, you know,

59:38

the conviction that you're the main character, that's

59:41

Jason to a T, right? All these things are happening

59:43

to him. And they're all things that

59:45

are down him to fix.

59:48

I think it's a well

59:50

executed character and that he is, yeah, he

59:52

is scary. The ways in

59:54

which he has clearly like

59:56

slipped out of control, even

59:59

while trying to. like

1:00:01

put on a mask of still being like functional

1:00:04

and like on even keel

1:00:06

is really-

1:00:09

I mean, I'd argue Jason doesn't exist. Like, yeah,

1:00:12

Chrissy dies and then Jason

1:00:14

doesn't exist anymore and like that almost like no

1:00:17

more exemplified than when like he's in the lake,

1:00:20

watch as a friend of him get, get

1:00:22

Vecna'd and that should be

1:00:24

the moment where, you know,

1:00:26

you would sit and think like, what's going on

1:00:28

here? But instead of just radicalizes him further

1:00:31

because I think he almost like mentally separated

1:00:33

once- No, he's just being convinced that Eddie

1:00:35

like summoned something from

1:00:38

beyond the world. Yeah. No,

1:00:40

I think that's a good point that like the notion that Jason

1:00:42

is anything other than this

1:00:44

like unhinged control freak is,

1:00:48

is kind of the questionable assumption

1:00:50

because yeah, for the first time something

1:00:52

bad happens to him and he's like,

1:00:54

I need to get a gun and kill a bunch of people.

1:00:57

And along that way, he will terrorize

1:00:59

his own friends, bully them into

1:01:01

joining his lynch mob and

1:01:04

then refuse to swerve

1:01:06

until the very, very end. I

1:01:11

think like I

1:01:14

dig the character, I dig the,

1:01:17

like I think it's partly something

1:01:21

maybe worth reflecting on

1:01:23

from them that like the scariest character in this

1:01:25

is probably Jason, that

1:01:27

like when all this shit

1:01:29

is going on with Vekta and

1:01:31

the Upside Down,

1:01:32

the scariest thing to happen is Jason

1:01:35

finding the kids at the old house because

1:01:37

Jason is a like,

1:01:44

he is a character just by virtue of age and

1:01:47

like,

1:01:48

and size, he is like, he is

1:01:50

more than the kids can handle

1:01:52

like physically and

1:01:54

he is also,

1:01:56

he's a character

1:01:58

just so driven by rage and anger.

1:01:59

that like, you know,

1:02:02

even with him and me one, that's a character that

1:02:04

doesn't shut the fuck up. That's character is always gonna

1:02:06

be like, I'm in a monologue and like wait for me to

1:02:08

figure out your way around this. Jason

1:02:11

did feel like a scary enough character that any

1:02:13

moment he could show up in a scene and shoot

1:02:16

one of the main cast and you'd be like,

1:02:18

yep, that tracks, didn't expect they would die that

1:02:20

way, but like, yeah, okay.

1:02:22

Well, and I think that's, you

1:02:24

know, hopefully, you

1:02:27

know, I don't know how much they'll focus on this in the final season, but

1:02:29

I think it like goes to show like when you were dealing

1:02:31

in such like fantastic spectacle,

1:02:35

no matter how good the like the prosthetics

1:02:37

of a Vecna or how good like the performer underneath

1:02:39

all of those prosthetics last CGIR, like

1:02:42

I think it is telling that like

1:02:44

the most compelling threat was just like a young

1:02:47

guy

1:02:48

with an ego and a gun. And like

1:02:50

those were some of the most like, I'm not

1:02:52

sweating it when Nancy gets a tentacle wrapped

1:02:54

around her neck, but like the moment he shows up

1:02:57

and what's that character's name, the younger sister,

1:03:01

Lucas's younger sister, I'll

1:03:03

pull it up, but like this

1:03:06

moment's like she's out there with the flashlight and

1:03:08

then he shows up and it's just like fucking

1:03:10

like back, back off, dude, like that's

1:03:13

the moment I start sweating is,

1:03:16

you know, I mean, that's the kind of back into

1:03:18

it with the performance, but I think it's like, you know,

1:03:20

telling that that is the thing that

1:03:22

I stressed the most about like

1:03:25

of like any like villainous arc throughout

1:03:27

the entirety of the season.

1:03:29

Yeah. Should

1:03:32

Hoppe have stayed dead? We

1:03:34

can't talk about the Russia thing, but my

1:03:36

take, like I think for me, Hoppe is, he

1:03:41

and Grace both just do not have enough to do here in

1:03:43

the season, Grace is there to look for Hoppe and Hoppe

1:03:46

is there to, I don't know,

1:03:48

we mean- Joyce? Yeah,

1:03:51

Joyce. But they don't,

1:03:54

like part of

1:03:57

it is, Again,

1:04:01

go back to season one.

1:04:03

One of the things that made Joyce so compelling

1:04:05

is that

1:04:06

she's just a working class single

1:04:08

mom trying to get anyone

1:04:11

to help or care that

1:04:12

her kids disappeared.

1:04:14

And she's trying to handle that

1:04:17

while also dealing with the fact that

1:04:19

she's precarious and on the border

1:04:21

right on the ragged edge of poverty.

1:04:25

By this point, this is her turn to a comedy

1:04:27

bit where she's doing telemarketing

1:04:30

and it's not going well, but not poorly

1:04:32

enough that there's any anxiety

1:04:35

around

1:04:36

how – there's no equivalent to the season –

1:04:39

How do they move to California? Don't

1:04:41

worry about it. Yeah. There's

1:04:43

no equivalent to the season – the scene we get in the first season where she's

1:04:45

trying to buy a bunch of groceries on credit

1:04:47

and equipment to go fight the monsters

1:04:49

on credit and

1:04:53

her dealing with that. I

1:04:56

think Hopp and Grace, you have two

1:04:58

things where you got good actors and characters

1:05:00

that people like, but they did

1:05:02

feel extraneous to the story. And the solution

1:05:04

was to make them integral to each other's story

1:05:06

here.

1:05:07

But they occupy

1:05:10

a huge amount of runtime and

1:05:12

it's all tangential

1:05:14

to what's happening in Hawkins. Well,

1:05:17

and it's just the characters of the previous season

1:05:20

already arrived at will they or won't they kiss? It's

1:05:22

like they will, but then they went, uh,

1:05:25

well, people are gonna be mad if we don't – when

1:05:27

on a ride has got nothing to do for the

1:05:30

entire season. So can we just extend

1:05:32

out that kiss like a little

1:05:35

long? Because it feels like they'll give them plenty

1:05:37

to do in the final season when everyone's like back together

1:05:40

and the dynamics are a little tighter, but it is

1:05:42

just the nature of like those characters sort of

1:05:44

like

1:05:45

got to the end of their journeys as

1:05:48

far as like what season four

1:05:50

could have been if it was like a tighter, more contained

1:05:52

storyline. Because as far as

1:05:54

I can tell, like, I don't know, I'm not even sure what Hopper really

1:05:56

accomplishes in Russia. Like we're gonna

1:05:58

close the –

1:05:59

going to affect the gate, it'll help the kids.

1:06:02

They have no idea what they're doing at the

1:06:04

time. Like, they have the

1:06:06

shut, like they propose that they're,

1:06:09

well, the kids, they're off to fight

1:06:11

something in Hawkins, will just like attack

1:06:14

the gate, I guess. But like, they don't know when or

1:06:17

why or what the plan is. Like, they're

1:06:19

just going to fight this Demogorgon with a cool last

1:06:21

sword and it'll be like slow mo.

1:06:23

And like, it's just, not if it adds

1:06:25

up because the moment you start thinking about like, why

1:06:28

is this story present?

1:06:29

Like you just realize like, it's not. It is just

1:06:31

there for the characters to do

1:06:33

bits. It is there for Hopper

1:06:36

to hit his foot with a sledgehammer and for you to

1:06:38

go, yuck. Because I

1:06:40

did and it was yuck. But it doesn't actually,

1:06:43

if that

1:06:43

plot line disappeared

1:06:46

and it just turned out, well, Hopper

1:06:48

just went to the upside down for a season and then when

1:06:51

they disrupted Vecna, like

1:06:53

he just reappeared in Hawkins, like nothing

1:06:55

changes. Like the tables

1:06:58

set exactly as it was the

1:07:00

season prior, but

1:07:01

you really like watching them in a room together and

1:07:04

then you get anxious when they're not in a room together and

1:07:06

the show just said like, well, how can we spin plates for,

1:07:08

you know, hopefully yes while

1:07:10

they're seeing. And the solution is Murray. Yeah,

1:07:12

which, you know what? For

1:07:15

a character who is mostly a bit, I'm

1:07:17

delighted every, like his bit still

1:07:19

works for me. I laugh every time.

1:07:22

I'm okay with it. Like they're

1:07:25

trying to like the, you know, the

1:07:27

stoner who's like his,

1:07:30

he's not that far off from that character. No.

1:07:33

Like it's just that he's not funny. And this one,

1:07:35

I still find

1:07:37

funny, even though I can understand why others are

1:07:40

maybe exhausted at this point. Yeah,

1:07:42

I mean, like

1:07:44

Argyle is the stoner, which

1:07:46

again, like just probably a reference to the sidekick

1:07:49

in Die Hard, Argyle the limo

1:07:51

driver, even though nothing like, but they're

1:07:53

both kind of carefree, wacky

1:07:56

spirits. But

1:07:59

like even he's not.

1:07:59

He's doing, it's

1:08:02

fine. It's just like what is,

1:08:04

I mean the problem, one of the problems with Argyle

1:08:06

is it kind of, he underscores how

1:08:09

horribly they've lost the plot with Jonathan Byers. Yeah,

1:08:13

which is like,

1:08:14

what are we doing with this character? And part

1:08:17

of it is, oh no, we made Steve

1:08:19

way more interesting because he has an arc. Like

1:08:22

Steve is kind of an entitled shithead in

1:08:24

season one, but like a good enough guy

1:08:26

that when he realizes his friends are assholes,

1:08:28

he turns on his friends and like cuts them out.

1:08:31

And when he- Well, the whole Byer family, like

1:08:33

despite setting up this entire

1:08:36

world, the Byers aren't really

1:08:38

relevant to

1:08:40

like any of the going ons anymore. Or

1:08:43

they've just been removed from like the story,

1:08:45

but they, like Jonathan Joyce,

1:08:48

like Will, like

1:08:51

I understand by the end of the season, like, you know, Will's

1:08:53

having a reaction to the Vecna or whatever,

1:08:55

but I'm sure he'll become more integral. Please don't

1:08:57

just make Will go through a trauma. So they ask, will

1:09:00

they ever let Will be happy? Someone asked

1:09:02

Will they ever let Will be happy? And I think

1:09:04

the one- They have to, right? They can,

1:09:06

they cannot, they, it would be so wildly

1:09:09

problematic that like Will- But

1:09:12

here's the problem. Here's the problem. Fuck

1:09:15

Will. Like,

1:09:19

so the thing about Stranger Things

1:09:22

is it's not about the group of four boys.

1:09:25

It's about the group of three boys who didn't get pulled

1:09:27

in the upside down.

1:09:29

And like the animating

1:09:31

event in Stranger Things is Will's absence.

1:09:34

Yes. And the entire show

1:09:37

develops around Will not being a character

1:09:39

who is there. He's just kind of like, oh,

1:09:41

we got to rescue Will. He was so

1:09:43

great. We love Will. He's in the other world. We

1:09:45

got to get him.

1:09:46

Season two is dealing with

1:09:49

the fallout of like, yeah, something came back through

1:09:51

with Will. And that's, well, that's carried out well.

1:09:53

The fact that like Sean Astin

1:09:55

tries to relate to him and step up as like a

1:09:58

stepdad type character.

1:09:59

gives him what turns out to be horrible

1:10:03

advice. You gotta stand up for yourself

1:10:05

and don't run from your fears. And

1:10:08

so Will feeds himself to the mind

1:10:11

flayer. All

1:10:13

this stuff works, but the problem is at no point

1:10:16

has Will ever been all

1:10:19

that integral to

1:10:21

the dynamics of the entire

1:10:24

team or the party, whatever you wanna call it. And

1:10:27

so here in this season, if you're

1:10:30

like as a person, you have a lot of sympathy

1:10:32

for him, right? Like he's like one

1:10:35

bad thing has happened to him after another, he's

1:10:37

realized he's gay, he's in love with his best friend who

1:10:40

appears to be

1:10:42

pretty straight and also in

1:10:45

a weirdly serious relationship for

1:10:48

they're bound together by they risk each other, they

1:10:50

risk lies for each other, but whatever. Mike

1:10:53

and 11 are like in this like really

1:10:55

serious relationship. But you can buy it from like

1:10:58

what they've gone through. A

1:11:02

relationship bound by tragedy, not necessarily

1:11:04

by attraction in chemistry. Right,

1:11:06

and so you have sympathy for where

1:11:08

Will is in all this, but the problem I

1:11:10

just keep coming back to is like

1:11:12

he doesn't

1:11:15

and never has fulfilled any role in the plot but

1:11:19

to be an instrument in the plot.

1:11:21

Yeah, he's just a device. He existed

1:11:24

to scream in the underground,

1:11:26

in the upside down in season one.

1:11:28

And then, I mean, yeah, he just acts

1:11:30

as like a narrative dramatic plot device

1:11:32

and even in two.

1:11:35

So it's like, yeah, I mean, like, will Will

1:11:37

kiss someone next season? Yeah, like, yeah, so

1:11:39

I'm pretty confident. Like it

1:11:41

would seem very odd to set

1:11:44

this arc up for him where clearly

1:11:47

Mike is

1:11:48

probably not gonna turn around and kiss

1:11:50

him, but he's going to find some sort of emotional

1:11:52

fulfillment. Like I can see the return

1:11:55

of the king ending for season six where like

1:11:57

he's holding hands with some kid.

1:11:59

that he has found or rescued like through

1:12:02

whatever shenanigans they get up to the next season. Like

1:12:04

they'll do that, but.

1:12:07

Like, do I think he's going to be a full character?

1:12:09

No, I think it's like pretty likely that he's

1:12:11

going to be like by the end of

1:12:13

this season, the fact that he's affected

1:12:16

by Vecna and has some sort of connection because

1:12:18

Vecna is the mind flayer

1:12:20

is that, you know, like this is how they're retconning, like

1:12:23

how to explain the different events

1:12:25

that are recurring in previous seasons. And

1:12:28

presumably, I think Vecna is also presented as.

1:12:31

You know, like a commander,

1:12:33

like that's not actually that there's a big bad, you

1:12:35

know, behind that. But I think like will

1:12:39

equal happy is just like will

1:12:42

kiss boy. Like not necessarily

1:12:44

will become like a character that is like interesting

1:12:46

or dynamic. And so I

1:12:49

if that is satisfying to you, like

1:12:51

that's satisfying on a certain level, like

1:12:54

it fulfills an arc. But I think

1:12:56

that the show is like clearly communicating

1:12:58

like

1:12:59

and who knows if that's the actor limitations,

1:13:01

who knows if they just don't know what to do with like

1:13:03

Will, given that

1:13:05

he started as a plot device and then

1:13:07

they're like, Oh, not going to

1:13:09

be an anthology series. We have to carry these characters

1:13:11

forward. But we we can't like kill

1:13:14

Will off like because you should have done that in the

1:13:16

first season if we were going to do it. Then tire

1:13:19

van is just like the

1:13:21

it's a van load of misfit characters

1:13:23

at this point. Yes, because like will

1:13:25

it's like will has two functions. It's like our

1:13:28

end. You're you're gay this season.

1:13:31

And also you're going to give

1:13:33

a really cringe speech to Mike

1:13:35

about like and Mike, what's special about you

1:13:37

is you're the heart. You're where the whole

1:13:39

this whole group together. And I'm like,

1:13:42

actually, that's Steve's job, my opinion. If

1:13:46

you're the heart of the operation is

1:13:49

it's it's Steve. But

1:13:51

this this. Yeah, that van is,

1:13:53

you know, like, you know, sometimes like before you on a

1:13:55

vacation, you know, like I cannot buy new food.

1:13:58

I don't want to order out. but I need

1:14:01

to make something that makes me full. What

1:14:03

do I have in the fridge? And you end up with a plate

1:14:06

full, none of this connects. Like this

1:14:08

is like, got some mac and cheese. There's

1:14:11

some tuna on here for some reason. I'm not

1:14:13

sure why. You know, like, then

1:14:16

you're like, well,

1:14:17

I ate this plate.

1:14:18

I am full.

1:14:20

Am I satisfied? Do we get anywhere?

1:14:24

Not really, but like, it was

1:14:26

a plate of food. And like, that's kind of,

1:14:29

I'm so curious what they do with those characters

1:14:31

by the end. Cause there's almost

1:14:33

like an impulse to be like, what

1:14:35

if at some point like, you know, 11 just

1:14:37

like kind of lost it for a minute and like blew up

1:14:39

that van. That'd be

1:14:42

so good. They're rolling up the rescuer

1:14:44

of the desert base. She just kind of

1:14:46

falls on them. Yeah.

1:14:50

Show me so much better. Is

1:14:52

the helicopter. That's what the show is saying

1:14:55

is like,

1:14:56

it's in its ensemble,

1:14:58

but there are tiers to these ensembles. And

1:15:00

it's

1:15:01

so funny to see it be so transparent

1:15:04

about what it, yeah,

1:15:06

look, there just is a D tier and we're

1:15:08

sorry. Like, the

1:15:11

reason Nancy and Steve and Dustin

1:15:14

are all together is cause like, that's S

1:15:16

tier. And that's, we put Eddie in there because

1:15:18

Eddie also S tier, you

1:15:20

know? Like, yeah. Is

1:15:22

most of what Dustin do, is

1:15:25

most of what Dustin does,

1:15:27

just yelling expository lines

1:15:29

at a high volume of the characters. Yes. Is

1:15:32

he funny about it? Also true.

1:15:35

And he's mean to the other characters in ways

1:15:37

that are really funny. But

1:15:40

yeah, but like some, and it kind of sucks to

1:15:42

the van is like, how did these characters who were once

1:15:44

so central this entire thing end up

1:15:46

feeling this extraneous? That like, will

1:15:49

nothing to do? Mike, even

1:15:51

less. It's like, 11, I

1:15:54

believe in you big ups too. It's like

1:15:56

little middle school wife. Big ups

1:15:58

to say. I'm

1:16:02

so proud of my

1:16:04

freshman wife. I am

1:16:06

so, people do not

1:16:08

know what this woman does with her mind.

1:16:12

And like, so his whole contribution

1:16:15

in all this is to be like, when she's getting

1:16:17

rocked, he's like, I believe in you. And

1:16:19

she's like, now I can fight. And

1:16:23

Jonathan is like, is

1:16:25

maybe the grimace situation here because

1:16:27

he

1:16:28

also seems like he's losing his girlfriend.

1:16:31

Like, is anyone rooting? No,

1:16:33

for a love triangle where they just saw

1:16:35

him with the points off.

1:16:37

Yeah, so sorry buddy, but

1:16:39

like, there's no chance Nancy's

1:16:41

getting back at you. The only chance was like,

1:16:44

if they killed Steve off and it's like, nah,

1:16:46

like ain't happening. But, and

1:16:48

that's the thing, it's like,

1:16:51

so

1:16:53

after he gets

1:16:54

like, where he's set up is, he's

1:16:57

sort of

1:16:58

like the alienated loner kid who is

1:17:00

put in that position largely because of poverty. Nancy's

1:17:03

nice to him, but also he's a guy who like, you suspect

1:17:05

has hidden depths.

1:17:08

Their arc is become

1:17:10

kind of like sidekick Nancy

1:17:12

Drew and

1:17:16

Frank Hardy type characters. Or Nancy

1:17:18

Drew had a boyfriend, right in those books. I

1:17:20

was like, But also these characters don't do

1:17:23

anything. They go to other characters

1:17:25

who do things for them, right? Like

1:17:28

Jonathan, like they

1:17:30

just drive to meet up with the hacker, the

1:17:33

Dustin's girlfriend from the previous season, which

1:17:35

was a good bit. Like I enjoyed that sequence in

1:17:37

the house. That's a good character.

1:17:40

Yeah, I like Home Alone.

1:17:44

But like none of those characters that, you

1:17:46

can't even, he's trying to book a flight. Can't book the

1:17:49

flight. You know, I mean, like, it's just, they don't,

1:17:51

they are giving zero, they are giving screen

1:17:54

time, but nothing to do.

1:17:58

And like, talk about. sabotaging

1:18:00

the character. If you're setting up, there's gonna be a love triangle.

1:18:04

This dude went out to California and just

1:18:08

got really into weed to the point

1:18:10

where he's like, no,

1:18:13

I can't leave my family. My family

1:18:15

needs me. His

1:18:19

whole deal is like, on the one hand, I'm just

1:18:21

such a dutiful son. I got to stand

1:18:23

here for my family. They depend on me. I can't

1:18:26

leave them. But also watch

1:18:28

me watch these massive bong

1:18:31

rips. That is my primary

1:18:33

motivation now, is

1:18:36

just getting high

1:18:38

as hell. To the point where

1:18:40

he completely punks out on

1:18:42

talking Nancy about, hey,

1:18:45

I know we're planning to go to school together, but instead I

1:18:47

decided to get really high and

1:18:50

live at my mom's house. Because it's what

1:18:52

she would want. I should almost feel like the writers popping

1:18:55

through Robin, or Robin is just constantly

1:18:58

being to both Nancy

1:19:01

and she being like, come on, you guys want to fuck.

1:19:04

Come on. Dude, she's Sebastian. What

1:19:06

are we doing here? Robin

1:19:08

does many times function as an audience surrogate

1:19:11

character. Especially

1:19:12

for those two characters, it

1:19:15

feels like it's just the audience being like,

1:19:17

how long are you gonna make us wait? And

1:19:19

it's fine waiting. That's one of the more fun

1:19:22

dynamics. Their separation

1:19:25

and

1:19:26

them arriving at this place is really enjoyable.

1:19:28

And I'm fine for them to stretch it out as long as they want.

1:19:31

But I mean, the show is like, it's

1:19:34

not like putting its finger on the scale. It's just like taking

1:19:37

giant boulders and dude. It

1:19:39

is like fan fiction. Jonathan is a loser.

1:19:41

And they're

1:19:43

gonna kill Jonathan. The only thing I can arrive

1:19:45

at is, the only way to resolve this is

1:19:47

Jonathan sacrificing himself for

1:19:50

Nancy and Nancy going, I didn't

1:19:52

really care anyway. I

1:19:54

know it's dude like,

1:19:56

they did turn him into a loser and

1:19:58

like he does get a good moment, which is when

1:19:59

And the one he realizes, because Mike is an idiot,

1:20:02

where he's like,

1:20:04

my brother just confessed to his friend that

1:20:06

he's gay and is in love with him.

1:20:08

And Mike missed it, but I see

1:20:10

it. It's a great moment. And they have a good

1:20:12

moment later. I think that moment where he just sort of watches it is

1:20:15

good, and I do like the way he handles it, which is he doesn't make,

1:20:18

he doesn't make Will say anything

1:20:20

he's not ready to say, but he just makes it very

1:20:23

clear, like,

1:20:25

I will always be here for you.

1:20:27

Yeah. And that's good. Like the one

1:20:29

good moment he has in this entire thing. But the rest

1:20:31

of it is he looks like a punk. And

1:20:34

in the meantime, Steve has turned

1:20:36

into the hero from Red Dawn. Get a haircut, Jonathan. Like,

1:20:39

Steve and Nancy are like, look

1:20:42

like they've just come out of like the Simi and E's liberation

1:20:44

army. They're all like fucking berets and like army

1:20:47

jackets. And we're getting the whole like,

1:20:49

oh no, Steve, let me bind your wounds

1:20:51

and shit. Like, and then multiple

1:20:53

cut, like in his fan fiction grade where

1:20:57

it is every other

1:20:59

character so interested in talking about

1:21:01

the central couple.

1:21:03

Yeah. Robin's just like, you

1:21:05

know,

1:21:06

if you're jealous of me, you shouldn't be. And

1:21:09

Eddie like contemplating his imminent death

1:21:11

being like, you know, Steve, Nancy

1:21:14

was ready to die for you.

1:21:17

So

1:21:19

yeah, like that, like that bus was fucking,

1:21:22

that fucking van was some

1:21:24

sad shit. Like

1:21:26

the van was everything going wrong with this

1:21:28

season. Like it

1:21:30

was like, it was excruciating. I felt bad for the,

1:21:32

I, do you imagine being an actor and

1:21:35

getting the scripts?

1:21:36

Like just. But that's, but that's also

1:21:38

speaks to the same thing with the prison arc. The same

1:21:40

thing with the van arc is it's

1:21:42

a consequence of their decision

1:21:45

to want to intercut

1:21:47

between all of these stories. It's not

1:21:49

hard to imagine. Yes.

1:21:52

Where they, they, they just examine the characters and they're like, okay, we don't want

1:21:54

to exercise them. Excess them entirely

1:21:56

from the season, but we don't have a ton of them for them to

1:21:58

do. Let's. compact that

1:22:00

into like the strongest moments

1:22:03

possible

1:22:04

and like string that all together. But

1:22:06

when it's like when it has to be just

1:22:08

turned into a piece of gum that

1:22:11

is stretched to its limit, like

1:22:13

it just snaps because they just

1:22:15

don't have enough material. And yes,

1:22:18

I agree with you that it's a bunch of characters that just don't

1:22:21

have a lot to do more broadly in

1:22:23

this universe, like the story that they're telling.

1:22:26

But even if they are unwilling to let them

1:22:28

go because they want to keep the

1:22:30

entire ensemble together, well, then they've done

1:22:32

all of them like the actors and the characters

1:22:35

are disservice by just having

1:22:37

them spin these plates with with

1:22:39

nothing to do because then all it does is just

1:22:42

make it transparent that that's what they're doing

1:22:44

as opposed to, you

1:22:45

know, again, if there was more of a focus structure to

1:22:47

the episodes where

1:22:48

you got an entire episode with them in the van,

1:22:51

I don't know how much better

1:22:53

it is, but it's like sort of contained. You get all

1:22:55

the best moments together and it has like

1:22:57

a better effect than just,

1:22:59

well, we've crosscut to the van again. Like what

1:23:02

are they up to? I you know,

1:23:04

because it doesn't get any stakes until 11 gets

1:23:07

involved and that's pretty late into the season.

1:23:09

It's weird too because it starts so strong. The

1:23:11

way they end up in the van is one of

1:23:13

the most shocking moments in the season is when

1:23:15

their safe house gets hit when

1:23:19

Joyce's house is invaded by the army and

1:23:21

like, yeah, one of the guards is just like shot

1:23:23

right away and you have the the the one-er

1:23:26

of the entire house being attacked and

1:23:28

it's like some real serious shit

1:23:29

and then the rest of it is like stoner

1:23:32

road trip comedy time to no

1:23:35

real end.

1:23:38

I think we touched on this a little

1:23:40

bit, but

1:23:41

you know,

1:23:43

as

1:23:44

we're talking about all these like stray plot threads, you know,

1:23:47

so he goes back to the

1:23:48

is the season bloated or not thing, they write, you

1:23:52

know, I've seen James Cameron preemptively respond

1:23:54

to complaints about the runtime of the next Avatar by comparing it to binge

1:23:56

watching a streaming show like Stranger Things. How

1:24:00

do you all feel about the run times of movies, TV

1:24:02

shows, and binge watching? For me, while

1:24:04

I might have had some issues pacing here and there, the length

1:24:06

of an episode of Stranger Things was moot beyond

1:24:08

deciding whether I'd spend my evening watching three episodes

1:24:11

in a row or one TV movie-esque

1:24:13

final episode. I'm much more tolerant of

1:24:15

streaming shows running long where I can

1:24:17

control when and how I watch them and where I take

1:24:19

breaks than movies and cinema with no intermission,

1:24:22

but I'm curious how you all feel. Love

1:24:24

the show. Cheers.

1:24:26

Corliss. I'm actually... I think

1:24:29

I'm there too. I wish things were lean and

1:24:31

mean and efficient.

1:24:33

I kind of like just having my big cereal

1:24:35

bowl full of Stranger Things to tuck into. That

1:24:38

final episode,

1:24:39

there was a natural episode break, 40 minutes

1:24:41

in, and I was like, they're about to go into the

1:24:44

Upside Down, and I'm pretty sure that's going to be 80 minutes

1:24:47

of just chaos.

1:24:49

I'm just going to take a break, and I'll come back to

1:24:51

it later. I felt no... It

1:24:53

was so clear that you'd just stop here. I was just

1:24:55

like, right. I'm checking out.

1:24:58

You know what? I liked having just a

1:25:00

few days full of just like binging Stranger

1:25:02

Things. I love that shit.

1:25:04

World Outside is bad. I

1:25:07

need this shit. I

1:25:11

mentioned earlier, I think streaming

1:25:14

in general has created

1:25:16

things longer than they need to be, and

1:25:18

I think there are moments like Stranger Things

1:25:20

where I'm here for the Excesses,

1:25:23

and if anything, the show is setting itself

1:25:25

up as like, I am Excess. Jeremy

1:25:28

Ror, that's kind of what

1:25:31

the show is, but I

1:25:33

think broadly it's been a bad thing, or

1:25:36

a thing I find annoying, or a thing that I

1:25:39

get to the end of a

1:25:40

show, and it's like, well, that episode

1:25:43

did not need to be an hour and 10 minutes.

1:25:46

That just decided to be an hour and 10 minutes.

1:25:49

I do think the difference between movies and TVs is fundamentally

1:25:52

different, exactly what this person is

1:25:54

touching on. You can control

1:25:56

it. If I get an

1:25:58

hour

1:25:59

and 30 minutes in and there's 45 minutes left, I

1:26:04

can just watch it tomorrow.

1:26:07

I'm good. And frequently,

1:26:09

movies that do run that long have

1:26:12

what feel like natural breaks that you can

1:26:14

sort of stop something before the momentum picks up

1:26:16

again. And so, I don't

1:26:19

know.

1:26:22

It didn't bother me. I'm like, you didn't bother me in Stranger

1:26:24

Things. It bothers me more broadly,

1:26:27

but maybe that's on a case-by-case basis of

1:26:29

the thing that clicks with you. And it's like, fuck it, I would just,

1:26:32

I'm watching Better Call Saul right now. I was like, those episodes

1:26:34

are three hours. The thing is though, I say that, and

1:26:36

I think part of the reason Better Call Saul works is because

1:26:38

it is so

1:26:39

fucking tight and effective that

1:26:43

if it was longer, like

1:26:45

they keep you like the tension is so sharp

1:26:48

that if it was longer, it could lose it. And the reason

1:26:50

it works is because,

1:26:51

well, it is 42 minutes, and like you know you're just locked

1:26:54

in this room for like this tiny amount

1:26:56

of time. It's like, well, how is this gonna resolve

1:26:58

itself? Whereas in Stranger Things, it's like, well,

1:27:01

just lean on back. We don't have to resolve

1:27:03

it anytime soon. The

1:27:06

thing that I, oh, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, and

1:27:09

it's weird, I can hold in my head the idea that like

1:27:11

there's entire subplots that don't need to be here, kind

1:27:13

of boring. And I wish they'd like, it's

1:27:15

not so much, I wish they'd gotten, I wish they'd either figured out a better

1:27:17

solution here or figured out a more interesting

1:27:19

thing to put in that runtime, but it's not the runtime

1:27:21

itself that bugs me. Like I don't

1:27:24

necessarily think it's that the season is so

1:27:26

freaking long that creates this problem. They

1:27:28

just did not come up with the right creative solutions

1:27:31

to some of these issues that they had.

1:27:34

You could have found things to do with

1:27:37

these long side, like

1:27:40

side plots. They just didn't,

1:27:42

but that's, but it was not the runtime that was

1:27:44

killing me. It was just like,

1:27:46

I don't know how many times I watched this shitty pilot try

1:27:50

to defraud like Joyce and Murray.

1:27:52

The thing I will say that's

1:27:54

related to this is

1:27:57

stranger things, I really,

1:28:00

I really wish it was a weekly episodic

1:28:02

drop. I am

1:28:04

not anti-binge. I think there

1:28:06

are shows that

1:28:07

make sense to just drop a whole thing

1:28:09

and have yourself work it. But I am

1:28:12

a, and this comes out of my experience watching

1:28:14

shows like X-Files and Lost.

1:28:16

Like I find it fun

1:28:19

to have a wait in between things and

1:28:21

to talk about people about those

1:28:23

things before you get to the next one. And there

1:28:25

are so many moments

1:28:27

in this season, like the running

1:28:29

up the hill moment especially. It manages to

1:28:32

break out of its containment field anyway

1:28:35

because it was just so strong. And I cannot believe we've made

1:28:37

it this far into talking about this without talking

1:28:39

about Kate Bush. But maybe we can

1:28:42

get there. But I really

1:28:45

like having the space to, just

1:28:50

to return to Better Call of Souls.

1:28:52

I love, Alan Seppenwald is a TV critic. I

1:28:54

adore his write-ups. The first thing I

1:28:56

do, I watch an episode and

1:28:58

then I go online and I read his write-up. And

1:29:00

then I go and read what other people like wrote about the episode.

1:29:03

And I really like that part of it. And

1:29:05

I

1:29:06

do a stranger thing. We got a little bit of

1:29:08

that, right? Like the fact that like the split

1:29:10

volume thing, whether it was like

1:29:13

a subscriber thing, a VFX thing, like

1:29:15

I don't really care, but it made it really

1:29:17

fun. Like,

1:29:18

I had told you, I was trying to race

1:29:21

to finish it so we could do this podcast before I won a vacation.

1:29:25

to finish this in time with my wife.

1:29:27

But then like that Thursday

1:29:29

night before we left for the vacation, like we came back

1:29:31

from the kids playing and

1:29:34

with a neighbor and it was already like nine

1:29:36

o'clock. And I was like, oh, not a chance. We're gonna

1:29:38

start this. And she just looks at me. She's like,

1:29:41

this is out. Like I need to see this whole

1:29:43

thing right now. And I was like, you get that

1:29:45

because like your friends are tweeting about

1:29:47

it, posting it on Facebook. And it's like, I just, I want

1:29:49

to see this end. And I want to be able to do

1:29:52

that so I can understand the memes

1:29:54

and the discussion. And like, I value

1:29:56

that part of the discourse

1:29:58

and great. Yeah, it's part of that.

1:29:59

That is, I don't have the time to binge,

1:30:02

but I do think it does

1:30:04

take away

1:30:05

from something when everything is dumped out. Yeah,

1:30:08

I mean- I think on a show by show basis that

1:30:10

would be different. There's no space to discuss

1:30:13

episodes that provide bridges to cool things.

1:30:16

Like, oh, that was cool when that happened. No,

1:30:18

I feel like Netflix is wedded to this idea of

1:30:21

we are defined by the binge watch. And

1:30:23

it's like they can't back off. They're reconsidering everything

1:30:26

but that, even though- You know what would be better for

1:30:28

your subs, like on a practical level?

1:30:30

What are you- you had to has range of things for four months?

1:30:33

And also- yes, exactly. And also

1:30:35

like, hey,

1:30:35

is it

1:30:37

all weird to you that they

1:30:40

can put out wildly varying quality

1:30:42

levels of Marvel shows and those like occupy

1:30:44

a ton of like the conversation space, regardless

1:30:48

of how interesting they are,

1:30:50

just by virtue of the fact that like, yep,

1:30:53

for the next like two months people

1:30:55

are gonna be talking about this thing. It's

1:30:57

just wild that you can like, you look at the show and

1:30:59

it is just

1:31:00

so what did they say was how

1:31:04

much stranger things cost season

1:31:06

four. It was astronomical.

1:31:09

Um, let's

1:31:12

see. Yes. New

1:31:15

episodes, $30 million apiece. The

1:31:18

idea that by the end of this you are spending,

1:31:20

you know, hundreds

1:31:23

of millions of dollars and just dumping

1:31:25

it on one, essentially one

1:31:27

day is just-

1:31:30

it made sense in a different era when you were trying

1:31:32

to convince people like here's this new

1:31:34

model of experiencing things. It

1:31:36

just divorced from my personal

1:31:39

feelings on like how I like to experience

1:31:42

and talk about television as an episode. I

1:31:44

feel like as an episodic medium, it- when

1:31:47

you release every episode, you're just saying we've made

1:31:49

a long movie.

1:31:50

And

1:31:52

a lot of TV shows are just long

1:31:55

movies, but I feel like part

1:31:57

of the advantage of the episodic is that like, you

1:32:00

You can talk about it in episodes and you lose

1:32:02

that when you just binge it as a movie. But

1:32:04

yeah, like given the state of their finances, it's

1:32:06

just like, because shows like this,

1:32:09

people, what are they gonna do, cancel? Like

1:32:11

no, no, they're not gonna cancel over

1:32:14

Stranger Things.

1:32:15

Yeah. It's a very weird thing. And

1:32:20

I guess maybe the thing you'd argue is, does

1:32:22

Stranger Things blow up

1:32:25

launching with a weekly model from the jump?

1:32:27

I think probably it was well made enough that it would

1:32:29

have, that pilot is really strong. But

1:32:32

I do see where they might have

1:32:34

reached a conclusion, not necessarily wrong about,

1:32:37

that one reason people latch onto this is like,

1:32:39

you could just ride that momentum and everyone's like, holy shit,

1:32:42

I'm super into the show and I watched like eight episodes yesterday.

1:32:45

It was incredible. Yes. But

1:32:47

like, they clearly don't have to do that now. And

1:32:49

they're kind of sticking with it. Once you've hooked people, you

1:32:51

can sort of, then you're good.

1:32:56

So you mentioned, you mentioned

1:32:58

Kate Bush. Let's start with

1:33:00

a really pointy question.

1:33:02

What's your favorite Kate Bush song outside

1:33:04

of Running Up That Hill?

1:33:06

I don't have an answer to that because I was introduced

1:33:08

to Kate Bush by running up that hill

1:33:11

and then just started listening to Love Hounds a

1:33:13

lot. That's right. That's the album

1:33:15

that's from. Love Hounds, yes, that's the name. Yes. Which

1:33:18

is excellent. Although you have an answer to this. Yes,

1:33:20

Withering Heights, hands down. I know, I know. Just instantly.

1:33:23

That song is incredible. That

1:33:25

song is incredible. So you knew Kate

1:33:27

Bush before, because that has been

1:33:29

the story of the season, is a, she's

1:33:31

a British artist, right?

1:33:35

And never really took off in the US

1:33:37

and this song has like broken streaming

1:33:40

records. I believe it was

1:33:42

on one of the pop charts.

1:33:48

She didn't qualify to be

1:33:50

charted because of yada,

1:33:53

yada, yada, and had like changed the rules

1:33:55

because this was exploding to a degree that you

1:33:58

just like had to fucking market.

1:33:59

at how big it was and it's just,

1:34:03

it's a wild thing. It's also a very good song. Yeah, I

1:34:05

mean, like, K-Push is like,

1:34:08

just one of the odder acts in music. I

1:34:10

mean, you can sort of hear it, right? Like, unusual

1:34:13

voice, like, works in

1:34:15

a falsetto range that's like really unusual

1:34:18

the way she deploys it.

1:34:21

It's a little unsettling. Unsettling is making the wrong

1:34:23

word. No, I mean, I think she leans into it. Like, she

1:34:25

played, like, her entire persona is

1:34:27

like,

1:34:29

ethereal shantus

1:34:32

from the land of the fae. Like, yeah,

1:34:34

it's a little, it's a little off key in, or

1:34:37

off kilter is like listening

1:34:39

to all of Lovehounds after like getting

1:34:41

into it. All right, I'm gonna help you. It's Hounds of Love.

1:34:44

Hounds of Love, okay, all right, D.A., I would say if D.A.,

1:34:46

I don't know if D.A.'s listening to this, but like, I'm sure

1:34:48

somewhere D.A. is upset,

1:34:50

like, psychically, because D.A.'s

1:34:53

the one that I asked, I was like, all right, what should I listen

1:34:55

to? And so I apologize, I apologize, D.A.

1:34:58

But who let the Lovehounds

1:35:01

out? Who

1:35:03

let the Lovehounds

1:35:05

out? But yeah, I mean, you look at her music video,

1:35:07

she leans into like, she cuts an odd figure, and

1:35:12

there's something sort of compelling about her music,

1:35:14

but you can also understand why it's like,

1:35:19

she's poppy,

1:35:22

but also, I think, does have a bit of that,

1:35:26

musical

1:35:30

theatricality,

1:35:31

whatever, I mean, like stage play musicals.

1:35:33

Yes. And so I think she

1:35:36

works in those spaces, and yeah, she

1:35:38

was like, I would say she was like solidly

1:35:40

in that like second or third tier of like pop acts

1:35:43

in this period. Her music's not immediately accessible,

1:35:46

right? Like, I mean, I think, you know,

1:35:48

running up that hill like is like, And that

1:35:50

is the big one. Having listened to it. That is the big one. It's

1:35:53

the big one, but like, but like listening to that album,

1:35:55

I remember like I put it on with

1:35:57

my wife in the car, and like there were multiple times

1:35:59

she was like, what? what are we listening to again? I was like, I know,

1:36:01

like the rest of the album, like I mean, it's got some bangers,

1:36:04

but like it is

1:36:06

not as like immediately sort of like

1:36:08

hits you with a hook the same way

1:36:11

that that song does. It was

1:36:13

interesting to read, you know,

1:36:15

relative to I think how a lot of music is

1:36:17

probably embedded into,

1:36:19

especially kind of like, what do you know,

1:36:21

they call it like needle drops, right? Like, oh, here's like the

1:36:23

cool song they dropped in here that they probably

1:36:25

came up with while they were editing this montage together

1:36:28

in the

1:36:29

script, like by

1:36:31

all accounts, I think

1:36:34

it was, who was it? Sadie, yeah, Sadie

1:36:36

Sanku plays Max. She was like, no, like

1:36:39

first scripts I got were like,

1:36:42

you know, before they even get to the sequence where they

1:36:44

use like running up that hill to escape

1:36:46

from Vecna, like it was written right

1:36:48

there, like Kate Bush running up that hill is Max's

1:36:51

favorite song. And so like just

1:36:53

interesting.

1:36:54

I think it's one of those things where

1:36:57

the common criticism of Stranger Things is just being

1:36:59

like, we just watched a bunch of Spielberg films and

1:37:01

just like ripped off. That was like, no,

1:37:03

like there's more going on here. And like, it's moments

1:37:05

like that,

1:37:06

that I think speak to the taste of like the Duffer

1:37:09

brothers that they can pull something like that

1:37:11

out. And I don't know, you can just

1:37:14

watch it like transforms the public

1:37:16

persona of a pop artist that

1:37:18

for a lot of people had

1:37:20

no relevance to them. Even if they

1:37:22

were around when she was, you know,

1:37:25

actually relevant and like on the scene.

1:37:28

Yeah. It

1:37:31

helps that she's also tied to,

1:37:34

one of the like, again, the sort of the characters who sort

1:37:36

of emerge as people who can just carry

1:37:39

entire scenes by themselves. I think they hit that

1:37:41

early with Millie Bobby Brown. And

1:37:43

I think this season it's Sadie Sank's Max

1:37:46

who is just- She's so good. Sorry,

1:37:48

in a different league, a mature performer.

1:37:51

Yeah, like if you're talking about a show in which like,

1:37:54

there's not a lot of,

1:37:56

I don't wanna call like, you know, comedy

1:37:58

not acting, but like if we're-

1:37:59

like dividing those like drama and

1:38:02

comedy. There aren't a lot of

1:38:04

like I love Nancy, but like, you know, I'm not necessarily

1:38:06

buying all of the emotional beats necessarily. Like

1:38:08

I buy it because of the interactions between like her and

1:38:12

Steve, but like

1:38:14

the probably like beyond

1:38:16

Winona Ryder and to some extent,

1:38:19

you know, to a slight lesser extent, Millie Bobby

1:38:21

Brown, like Sadie Sink is like the,

1:38:23

doing the most like capital A acting

1:38:25

in this. Like she carries

1:38:27

the entire season dramatically

1:38:31

on her shoulders. And I mean,

1:38:33

I just like crushes it. Like every scene

1:38:35

with her is just, oh my God. I mean, the way they

1:38:38

take, the

1:38:41

way they like sort of kind

1:38:42

of retcon like more

1:38:44

emotional resonance with the relationship

1:38:47

with her brother is like one of the smarter

1:38:49

storytelling decisions they make. Like

1:38:52

that moment where they,

1:38:54

you know, that first sequence where she gets possessed by Vecna

1:38:56

cause she's apologizing at the,

1:38:58

at the gravestone. And then by the end, Vecna

1:39:01

gets her to admit

1:39:02

she wanted him dead and she was happy about it.

1:39:05

His face is just

1:39:08

like brutal. And she

1:39:10

sells the shit out of it. Yeah,

1:39:13

it's like from the moment that she realizes

1:39:15

she's laboring under this kind of death sentence for

1:39:18

the season, she is

1:39:21

handed a harder assignment and

1:39:23

given a lot of scenes to basically carry by herself.

1:39:26

And they are the most compelling like

1:39:28

gut punch scenes in the show.

1:39:30

And it does like show up that

1:39:34

there are not a lot of

1:39:37

like pure actors among like

1:39:40

the cast of kids that can keep pace with

1:39:42

her, right? Like, you know,

1:39:44

they keep, they keep Mike far

1:39:46

away from her this season, right? Like just no need

1:39:48

to have him act opposite her. But

1:39:53

you know, even, even like Lucas is

1:39:55

mostly there to be like

1:40:00

a supportive like normie

1:40:02

boyfriend in a lot of ways. But

1:40:04

like she carries

1:40:07

all this stuff by herself and she's

1:40:09

incredible with it. I think it's like this,

1:40:12

like if the Vecna stuff works

1:40:15

at all, it is because you

1:40:17

have Max

1:40:19

basically

1:40:22

living with that death sentence over her head. And

1:40:25

like

1:40:26

being able to go confront him that

1:40:28

last time,

1:40:31

and

1:40:31

it's super weird how that ends up playing out,

1:40:33

that they basically,

1:40:36

we see her just get fucking wadded

1:40:39

up and just like crushed to death

1:40:41

by Vecna. And then for

1:40:43

a reason, like,

1:40:45

now you know I believe Eleven has crazy

1:40:48

powers.

1:40:51

Does her being like, no,

1:40:54

and being really sad, does that, can

1:40:57

she res people? Yeah, she had a Phoenix

1:40:59

down in her pocket. It was a little weird,

1:41:02

like where it's like Max is alive. She's super

1:41:04

serious though, it's so serious. Like she might, you know, who

1:41:07

knows if she'll ever be the same. She

1:41:09

might be, she might've sorta already be dead,

1:41:11

but she's not dead. Well, because they don't, they don't,

1:41:13

they don't really establish, it'd be one thing that they established